^     THE      \ 
O   LIBRARIES  ^ 


GENERAO 
UBRARV 


I'hoto.  Saroiiy  i!?-"  Co..  Lid. 


A  WOMAN 
AND    THE   WAR 


BY 

THE  COUNTESS  OF  WARWICK 

author  of 
'*wabwick  castle  and  its  earl8,"  "autobiography  op  joseph  arch, 
"an  old  engush  garden" 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


COPTEIGHT,  1916, 
BT  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


GIFT  OF 
H.  W.   WILSON 
•    MAR  2  2   1923 


V^  •<  v£>  6 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


PREFACE 

It  is  not  without  serious  reflection  that  I  have  col- 
lected these  thoughts  in  war  time  to  offer  in  book 
form  to  those  who  may  care  to  read  and  ponder 
them.  They  were  written  for  the  most  part  on  the 
spur  of  vital  moments,  when  some  of  the  tendencies 
of  the  evil  times  through  which  we  are  living 
seemed  to  call  for  immediate  protest.  I  have  felt 
more  strongly  than  ever  in  the  past  two  years  that 
we  are  in  danger  of  accepting  as  something  out- 
side the  pale  of  criticism  the  judgments  of  those 
who  lead,  and  sometimes  mislead  us.  The  support 
or  hostility  of  the  newspaper  press — in  some  as- 
pects the  greatest  distorting  medium  in  the  world 
— is  still  ruled  by  party  considerations.  Loyalty 
or  ill-will  to  the  men  in  oflice  colours  all  the  views 
of  those  who  praise  or  blame,  and  it  happens  often 
that  a  good  measure  is  damned  for  what  is  best  or 
lauded  for  what  is  worst  in  it.  Again,  I  have  felt 
that  while  much  of  the  fighting  spirit  of  the  coun- 
try is  subject  to  army  discipline,  the  tendency  of 
government  has  been  to  make  helpless  puppets  of 


iv  PREFACE 

the  citizens  who  remain  behind  the  forces  in  the 
field.  In  the  near  future,  if  we  would  save  what 
is  left  of  our  heritage  of  freedom,  and  would  even 
extend  the  comparatively  narrow  boundaries  that 
existed  before  the  autumn  of  1914,  we  must  re- 
lieve the  press  of  the  self -conferred  duty  of  think- 
ing for  us.  We  must  not  give  our  rulers  a  blank 
cheque;  their  best  efForts  tend  more  to  rouse  our 
suspicions  than  to  compel  our  confidence. 

Judging  all  the  matters  dealt  with  in  these  pages 
as  fairly  and  honestly  as  I  can,  I  have  found  my- 
self repeatedly  in  opposition  to  the  authorities. 
The  legislation  from  which  we  have  suffered  since 
war  began,  the  efforts  to  relieve  difficult  situa- 
tions and  prepare  for  obvious  emergencies  have 
savoured  largely  of  panic  and  can  boast  no  more 
than  a  small  element  of  statesmanship.  So  I  have 
protested  and  the  protests  have  grown  even  beyond 
the  limit  of  these  book  covers,  while  an  ever-swelling 
letter-bag  has  told  me  that  I  have  interpreted, 
however  feebly,  the  thoughts,  wishes,  and  aspira- 
tions of  many  thinking  men  and  women.  We  are 
on  the  eve  of  events  that  will  demand  of  evolution 
that  it  mend  its  paces  or  become  revolution  with- 
out more  ado.  The  international  crisis  and  the  na- 
tional makeshifts  must  have  proved  to  the  dullest 
that  the  world  is  out  of  joint. 


PREFACE  V 

I  make  no  claim  to  traverse  the  whole  ground, 
modesty  forbids,  and  Mr.  Zangwill  has  accom- 
plished the  task  in  his  "War  for  the  World,"  the 
most  brilliant  work  that  has  seen  the  light  since 
August,  1914.  I  have  sought  to  point  out  where 
and  why  and  how  we  are  moving  backwards.  I 
can  command  no  eloquence  to  gild  my  words,  I  can- 
not pretend  to  have  more  to  say  than  will  have  oc- 
curred to  every  man  and  woman  of  advanced  views 
and  normal  intelligence,  but  it  does  not  suffice  to 
think;  one  must  make  thought  the  prelude  of  ac- 
tion. Strong  in  this  belief  I  have  not  hesitated  to 
attempt  something  more  than  mere  criticism.  I 
cannot  wave  flags,  abuse  enemies,  or  extol  popular 
idols;  and  consequently  those  who  read  will  please 
accept  these  and  other  limitations. 


FRANCES  EVELYN  WARWICK. 


Wabwick  Castle, 

August,  1916. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEB  PAOB 

I  King  Edward  and  the  Kaiser 1 

II  The  Greatest  Fight  of  All 15 

III  England's  Drink  Legislation 24 

IV  War  and  Marriage 33 

V  Nursing  in  War  Time 40 

VI  Two  Years  of  War — Woman's  Loss  and  Gain  49 

VII  Child  Labour  on  the  Land 56 

VIII  Comrades 64 

IX  The  Curse  of  Autocracy 72 

X  Woman's  War  Work  on  the  Land  ....  85 

XI  German  Women  and  Militarism 101 

XII  Youth  in  the  Shambles 114 

XIII  Thoughts  on  Compulsion 124 

XIV  Women  and  War 133 

XV  Race  Suicide 142 

XVI  The  Lesson  of  the  Picture  Theatre      .     .     .  158 

XVII  Truth  will  out 166 

XVIII  The  Claim  of  All  the  Children 175 

XIX  The  Prussian  in  Our  Midst 189 

XX  The  Grown-Up  Girls  of  England  ....  197 

XXI  The  Social  Horizon 205 

XXII  How  Shall  We  Minister  to  a  World  Diseased?  215 

XXIII  How  I  Would  Work  for  Peace 224 

XXIV  Lord  French 234 

XXV  Lord  Haldane:    Some  Recollections  and  an 

Estimate 243 

XXVI  Grounds  for  Optimism 250 

XXVII  Anglo-American  Relations  in  Peace  and  War  258 


A  WOMAN 
AND  THE  WAR 


KING  EDWARD   AND  THE   KAISER 

Since  the  war  began  I  have  read  numerous  ex- 
tracts from  the  press  of  Germany  and  from  the 
contributions  of  German  writers  to  American  pa- 
pers stating  in  the  most  unequivocal  terms  that 
the  late  King  Edward  devoted  his  political  sagacity 
to  the  task  of  isolating  Germany,  that  he  promoted 
alliances  to  that  end,  and  that  he  deliberately 
sought  to  compass  the  destruction  of  the  German 
Empire. 

At  first  I  took  these  remarks  to  be  no  more  than 
the  rather  unfortunate  outpourings  of  the  unin- 
formed, but  I  have  seen  of  late  that  they  have  been 
repeated  with  great  insistence  until  there  is  a  dan- 
ger that  they  will  become  an  article  of  faith,  not 
alone  in  Germany  but  in  other  countries  where 
Germans  have  a  sympathetic  following.  I  do  not 
choose  as  a  rule  to  discuss  questions  of  this  kind, 


2  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

I  prefer  to  leave  popular  error  to  correct  itself, 
but,  having  enjoyed  the  confidence  of  King  Ed- 
ward before  and  after  he  came  to  the  throne,  hav- 
ing heard  from  his  own  lips  scores  of  times  his 
attitude  towards  Germany  and  the  Germans,  it 
seems  to  be  a  duty  to  set  out  the  plain  truth.  I 
will  do  so  in  the  endeavour  to  sweep  away  one  of 
the  most  ridiculous  and  mischievous  conceptions 
engendered  by  the  present  evil  condition  of  things. 

Had  I  ever  imagined  that  the  present  crisis,  or, 
for  that  matter,  any  political  development  of  the 
peaceful  kind  would  have  led  to  the  statements  I 
seek  to  refute,  how  easy  it  would  have  been  to 
jot  down  the  purport  of  conversations  in  which 
high  policy  was  discussed!  Fortunately,  I  have 
an  excellent  memory  and  it  is  reinforced  by  letters 
to  which  I  have  access,  and  I  hope  to  commit  the 
reports  that  have  been  spread  abroad  to  the  ob- 
livion that  is  their  proper  place.  I  can  vouch  for 
the  absolute  truth  of  all  I  have  to  say,  and  I  am 
writing  with  a  full  sense  of  responsibility. 

In  the  first  place  the  intimate  relations  between 
the  English  and  German  courts  should  be  remem- 
bered; one  of  my  earliest  recollections  is  of  being 
taken  to  visit  the  old  Empress  Augusta  at  the  Ger- 
man Embassy.  This  was  when  I  was  a  child,  and 
I  know  I  went  many  times,  so  her  visits  would 
probably  have   been  frequent.     On  my   writing- 


KING  EDWARD  AND  THE  KAISER  3 

table  is  the  silver  and  mother-of-pearl  ornament 
that  was  her  wedding  present  to  me.  Everybody 
respected  the  old  Emperor  William,  and  every- 
body admired  the  Crown  Prince  Frederick.  When 
he  married  Queen  Victoria's  eldest  daughter,  the 
Princess  Royal,  who  became,  after  the  death  of 
Princess  Alice,  King  Edward's  favourite  sister, 
the  relations  between  the  two  courts  could  hardly 
have  been  more  amicable.  Queen  Victoria  loved 
Germany  and  the  Germans,  she  adored  her  grand- 
son. In  her  eyes  he  could  do  no  wrong,  she  even 
went  so  far  as  to  hold  him  up  to  her  eldest  son 
as  a  model.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Princess  of 
Wales,  being  a  Dane,  could  not  forget  or  forgive 
tlie  theft  of  Schleswig  Holstein;  her  sister  the  Rus- 
sian Empress  shared  her  suspicions  of  German  in- 
tentions, but  I  never  heard  of  one  or  the  other  origi- 
nating or  encouraging  anti-German  intrigues. 

As  the  Kaiser  grew  up  towards  manhood  his 
personality  was  hardly  known;  his  father,  the 
Crown  Prince  Frederick,  a  far  more  noble  figure, 
monopolised  attention.  Beyond  the  fact  that  he 
was  Queen  Victoria's  favourite  grandson  nothing 
was  known  about  William  II.  Nobody  thought 
that  he  would  be  called  upon  to  rule  before  he 
was  middle  aged  or  elderly;  his  father's  illness 
was  unsuspected.  But  if  there  was  no  ill  feeling 
at  the  English  court,  it  is  impossible  to  say  the 


4  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

same  of  the  court  at  Berlin.  The  presence  of  the 
Princess  Royal  was  resented;  many  people  be- 
lieved, or  affected  to  believe,  that  the  marriage  had 
been  designed  to  make  Germany  politically  sub- 
servient to  Great  Britain.  As  everybody  knows, 
these  feelings  grew  apace  as  soon  as  the  old  Em- 
peror William  had  breathed  his  last,  and  when,  a 
few  months  later,  the  Emperor  Frederick  passed 
away,  the  Anglophobia  had  spread  throughout  the 
Court  circles  and  the  young  Kaiser  had  been 
tainted  with  the  Court  prejudice  against  his  own 
mother.  He  did  not  treat  her  well;  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  he  treated  her  badly.  She,  nat- 
urally enough,  complained  to  her  brother,  the 
Prince  of  Wales, — I  have  already  said  that  she 
was  now  his  best  loved  sister.  He  was  angry  on 
her  account  and  spoke  his  mind.  Relations  be- 
tween the  young  Kaiser  and  his  uncle  were  al- 
ready strained.  I  must  turn  back  a  little  to  ex- 
plain why. 

In  the  early  days,  when  King  Edward  had  ar- 
rived at  man's  estate  and  married,  he  sought  to 
take  a  legitimate  interest  in  state  affairs.  He  was 
disposed  to  study  and  to  learn,  and  sought,  not 
without  ample  justification,  to  be  admitted  to  the 
company  of  the  little  group  of  statesmen  who  ad- 
vised the  Queen  and  ruled  the  Empire.  But  Queen 
Victoria  would  have  none  of  it.     She  practically 


KING  EDWARD  AND  THE  KAISER  5 

refused  her  son  access  to  the  Councils  of  State, 
she  instructed  her  Ministers  to  keep  all  state  pa- 
pers from  him;  within  the  compass  of  a  limited 
monarchy  she  was  determined  to  rule  alone. 

Her  eldest  son,  finding  that  he  was  not  to  be 
accepted  as  a  worker,  decided  to  amuse  himself. 
If  he  could  not  direct  public  policy  he  would  at 
least  direct  fashion,  if  he  could  not  assist  the  For- 
eign Office  he  could  at  least  enable  English  So- 
ciety to  take  rank  among  the  smartest  in  Europe. 
So  the  ]\Iarlborough  House  set  came  into  existence, 
and  with  its  rise  came  the  first  beginnings  of  the 
Kaiser's  criticism.  There  were  two  grounds  for 
this. 

In  the  first  place  King  Edward's  personal  popu- 
larity was  unbounded;  wherever  he  went  he 
charmed  women  and  men,  and  it  was  quite  clear 
that  he  would  be  a  force  to  be  reckoned  with  in 
diplomacy,  when  in  the  fullness  of  time  he  ascended 
the  throne;  on  the  other  hand,  the  Kaiser  lacked 
all  the  qualities  that  his  uncle  possessed  in  abun- 
dance. Hard-working  and  conscientious,  he  was 
petulant,  exacting,  and  uncertain.  Naturally, 
then,  he  found  matter  for  grievance  against  the 
uncle  who,  seemingly  without  effort,  swayed  opin- 
ion and  enjoyed  esteem.  Jealousy  was  the  origin 
of  disagreement. 

There  is  another  side  to  the  antagonism.     The 


6  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

Kaiser  was  always  a  very  strict-living,  sober- 
minded  man,  a  model  husband  and  father,  honestly 
representative  of  the  domestic  virtues  in  the  high- 
est degree.  King  Edward,  largely  by  force  of 
circumstances,  lived  a  life  of  gaiety  and  pleasure; 
whatever  he  did  he  did  thoroughly;  as  it  might 
not  be  work,  it  was  play.  He  raced,  yachted,  shot, 
played  cards,  entertained,  visited  all  his  friends, 
and  had  a  wide  field  of  friendships.  Though 
shrewd,  worldly,  and  quick  witted,  he  made  certain 
mistakes,  and  these  gave  his  nephew  an  oppor- 
tunity that  was  quickly  taken.  Perhaps  the  Kaiser 
would  utter  a  criticism  on  the  spur  of  the  mo- 
ment, it  would  be  taken  up,  magnified,  polished, 
and  brought  over  to  King  Edward  in  the  finished 
and  augmented  state.  By  the  way,  I  am  refer- 
ring, unless  I  state  the  contrary,  to  the  years  when 
King  Edward  was  Prince  of  Wales.  I  use  his 
final  title  to  cover  all  the  years  with  which  I  am 
dealing.  King  Edward  had  great  gifts,  and  when 
the  time  came  to  turn  them  to  the  best  account, 
they  were  invaluable  to  his  country  but,  as  I  have 
said,  he  was  not  infallible.  He  made  mistakes. 
Tranby  Croft  provided  one,  his  friendship  for 
Baron  Hirsch  provided  another;  for  the  Baron, 
though  he  may  have  been  a  charming  man — cer- 
tainly his  wife  was  a  charming  woman  and  a  dear 
friend  of  mine — was  an   unscrupulous  financier 


KING  EDWARD  AND  THE  KAISER  7 

who  had  accumulated  a  vast  fortune  by  curious 
and  unclean  methods  of  which  the  full  story  can- 
not be  told,  and  yet  for  all  his  faults,  he  was  not 
an  ignoble  man,  but  in  some  phases  of  his  complex 
nature  an  idealist  and  philanthropist. 

Berlin  sneered  at  Baron  Hirsch,  Vienna  was  ac- 
tually shocked,  for  in  the  Dual  Empire  a  man  is 
judged  by  his  quarterings,  and  even  if  he  should 
have  made  a  huge  fortune  honestly  and  lacks  quar- 
terings he  is  less  than  the  penniless,  vicious,  and 
brainless  person  of  high  descent. 

King  Edward  smiled  at  the  rage  and  spite  of 
Vienna  and  Berlin.  He  remarked  to  one  of  his 
intimates  that  he  could  not  allow  either  capital  to 
choose  his  friends  for  him,  and  in  order  that  there 
might  be  no  mistake  about  his  intentions  he  ac- 
cepted an  invitation  from  Baron  Hirsch  to  shoot 
with  him  on  his  great  estates  at  Eichorn.  I  don't 
know  whether  Baron  Hirsch  asked  any  Austrians 
or  Germans,  certainly  none  accepted  the  invitation, 
and  King  Edward  found,  much  to  his  amusement, 
that  all  the  other  guests  were  Englishmen.  He 
merely  laughed,  enjoyed  his  visit,  and  then,  after 
it  was  over,  visited  the  Baron  in  Paris,  to  the  in- 
tense annoyance  of  the  Jockey  Club  there.  Per- 
haps it  was  not  altogether  wise  to  defy  the  con- 
ventions, but  of  course  English  Society  has  never 
been  quite  as  exclusive  as  that  of  Berlin  or  Vienna. 


8  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

The  Kaiser  chafed  at  his  uncle's  association  with 
a  mushroom  financier  whose  record  was  only  too 
well  known,  he  chafed  too  when  King  Edward 
spent  long  hours  at  Homburg  with  the  Empress 
Frederick  who  had  a  castle  there  in  the  days  of 
her  widowhood.  The  love  between  the  brother  and 
sister  was  very  beautiful.  She  confided  all  her 
troubles  to  him  from  the  early  days,  for  oddly 
enough  when  there  were  family  quarrels  Queen 
Victoria  sided  with  her  grandson  against  the  Prin- 
cess Royal,  but  it  is  only  right  and  fair  to  say 
that  the  Kaiser  reciprocated  her  affection,  and  his 
grief  when  she  passed  away  was  heartfelt.  The 
Homburg  meetings  were  gall  and  wormwood  to 
the  Kaiser  and  they  renewed  the  old  fear  of  his 
uncle's  popularity.  When  instead  of  going  to 
Homburg  in  Germany,  King  Edward  went  to 
Marienbad  in  Austria  there  was  still  more  uneasi- 
ness in  Berlin's  governing  circles,  for  King  Ed- 
ward's extraordinary  personal  magnetism  was 
known  and  feared,  he  was  credited  with  having 
the  power  if  he  chose  to  exercise  it  of  seriously 
disturbing  the  foundations  of  the  Triple  Alliance. 
The  Kaiser  need  not  have  been  uneasy,  his  uncle 
did  not  enter  into  political  conversations. 

It  will  be  seen  then  that  the  disagreement  be- 
tween uncle  and  nephew  had  been  little  more  than 
a  sort  of  family  quarrel  intensified  by  the  high 


KING  EDWARD  AND  THE  KAISER  9 

standing  of  both  parties.  I  have  heard  King  Ed- 
ward speak  angrily  of  his  nephew,  but  only  be- 
cause of  the  way  he  treated  his  mother,  the  per- 
sonal gibes  and  criticisms  did  not  often  sting  him, 
he  merely  said  his  nephew  was  suffering  from 
megalomania  and  had  not  learned  to  control  a 
rather  unruly  tongue.  In  all  the  years  I  have 
passed  mentally  in  review  I  do  not  remember  hear- 
ing King  Edward  utter  a  single  sentence  of  ill-will 
to  Germany. 

The  Kaiser's  visits  to  England  in  the  earlier 
days  have  left  no  special  impression  upon  my  mem- 
ory. I  remember  dancing  opposite  to  him  in  a 
quadrille  at  a  Court  Ball  in  Buckingham  Palace 
and  being  present  at  a  dinner-party  given  for 
him  in  a  private  house.  His  friends  among  the 
ladies  of  England  were  the  wives  of  members  of 
the  Royal  Yacht  Squadron;  among  these  was  Lady 
Ormonde.  She  used  to  stay  at  Kiel  for  the  yacht- 
ing festival,  as  guest  of  the  Kaiser  with  her  hus- 
band who  was  then  Commodore  of  the  R.Y.S. 

In  all  his  criticisms  King  Edward  was  scrupu- 
lously fair.  Even  in  discussing  his  sister's  rela- 
tions with  her  son  he  would  add  that  they  were 
both  strong  personalities  with  different  sympathies 
and  view-points,  and  that  sustained  agreement  be- 
tween them  was  probably  impossible.  He  admired 
the  Kaiserin  frankly,  as  all  must  who  know  the 


10  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

gracious  and  kindly  lady  who  in  her  own  quiet  and 
unobtrusive  fashion  has  filled  her  life  with  good 
deeds. 

Relations  between  King  Edward  and  his  nephew 
improved  immensely  when  Queen  Victoria  died. 
Not  only  did  the  Kaiser  come  over  to  the  funeral, 
but  he  seemed  on  that  occasion  to  have  laid  aside 
the  brusqueness  that  had  marked  earlier  visits. 
All  the  Court  noticed  it,  and  King  Edward  com- 
mented upon  it  to  me  with  very  evident  pleasure. 
The  process  of  improvement  in  relations  started 
about  1899.  Through  the  Boer  War  events  had 
been  moving  towards  a  reconciliation. 

The  Kaiser's  correct  behaviour  during  the  war 
which  his  frenzied  telegram  on  the  occasion  of  the 
Raid  had  done  something  to  bring  about,  placated 
King  Edward,  and  after  Queen  Victoria's  death 
relations  between  the  two  men  improved  sensibly. 
The  Kaiser  either  limited  his  criticisms  or  saw 
to  it  that  they  were  not  indiscreetly  uttered.  The 
old  friendliness  was  resumed,  and  things  became 
as  they  were  after  the  attempt  on  King  Edward's 
life  in  Denmark  when  the  Kaiser  left  Berlin  and 
met  the  royal  train  at  the  frontier  station  to  con- 
gratulate his  uncle  upon  his  escape  and  inquire 
after  his  health.  King  Edward  wrote  to  me  from 
Sandringham  on  his  return.  After  thanking  me 
for  a  letter  and  telegram  of  congratulations,  he 


KING  EDWARD  AND  THE  KAISER  11 

said  that  the  Kaiser  came  all  the  way  from  Berlin 
to  meet  his  train  at  Altona  and  inquire  after  his 
health.  He  thought  that  was  very  kind  of  the 
Kaiser. 

I  remember  that  the  Kaiser's  later  visits  to  Eng- 
land were  quite  a  success.  King  Edward  remarked 
to  me,  when  his  nephew  was  staying  at  Highcliffe 
in  Hampshire  for  his  health,  how  greatly  he  had 
improved  in  manner,  how  courteous  and  consid- 
erate he  was,  and  how  much  of  the  old  unrest  and 
irritability  seemed  to  have  gone.  Between  King 
George,  Queen  INIary,  and  the  Kaiser,  relations 
could  not  have  been  more  friendly,  and  when  King 
Edward  and  Queen  Alexandra  went  to  Berlin  he 
thoroughly  enjoyed  his  visit,  and  told  me  as  much 
on  his  return. 

How  then,  it  may  be  asked,  shall  we  account 
for  the  Anglo-French  convention  of  1904,  and  for 
the  meeting  between  King  Edward  and  the  Tsar 
at  Reval  when  the  foundations  of  friendship  be- 
tween England  and  Russia  were  laid?  In  Ger- 
many it  is  believed  that  these  arrangements  were 
aggressive  in  their  intention  and  demonstrated 
King  Edward's  hostility.  In  both  cases  King  Ed- 
ward, absolutely  faithful  to  the  Constitution,  fol- 
lowed the  advice  of  his  ministers,  and  did  not  dis- 
cuss his  personal  predilections  at  all.  After  the 
Reval  meeting  I  asked  him  his  view  of  the  political 


■/ 


12  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

situation,  and  as  far  as  my  memory  serves  this  is 
what  he  said:  "Germany  is  our  commercial  rival, 
she  has  a  magnificent  business  aptitude,  she  might 
develop  with  growing  riches  and  a  few  adventurous 
statesmen  a  rivalry  of  another  kind.  The  Reval 
meeting,  with  the  French  convention,  will  I  hope 
put  an  end  to  the  possibility.  But  nothing  has 
been  done  that  stands  in  the  way  of  a  good  un- 
derstanding between  London  and  Berlin.  I  be- 
lieve all  sensible  men  desire  peace.  We  have  no 
quarrel  with  Germany  or  any  other  power." 

I  may  add  that  King  Edward  admired  Germany 
almost  as  much  as  he  loved  France.  The  thorough- 
ness of  the  German  business  method,  the  rejection 
of  everything  slovenly  in  thought  and  action,  im- 
pressed him  greatly,  and  he  once  made  a  remark- 
able statement  to  me.  It  was  in  London  in  the 
late  winter  of  1909-10,  a  few  months  before  he 
died.  He  came  to  tea  and  talked  of  German  ad- 
ministration. "Do  you  know,"  he  said,  "that  if 
this  country  could  be  controlled  in  the  same  way, 
we  should  be  all  the  better  for  it?  If  we  could 
be  ruled  by  Germans  just  long  enough  to  have 
our  house  put  in  order" — he  paused,  and  added 
with  a  laugh — "You  know  the  trouble  is  that  if 
we  once  had  them  we  could  not  get  rid  of  them." 
This  statement  was  made  during  our  last  conver- 
sation; I  never  saw  King  Edward  again,  but  his 


KING  EDWARD  AND  THE  KAISER  13 

words  should  be  sufficient  to  show  that  he  was 
not  animated  by  an  ill-feeling  towards  the  Ger- 
man Empire.  They  are  hardly  the  words  of  a  man 
who  plotted  against  the  land  ruled  over  by  the 
son  of  the  woman  who  was  at  once  his  favourite 
sister  and  most  devoted  friend. 

Age,  and  an  experience  of  great  affairs  not  to 
be  excelled  by  any  of  his  contemporaries,  had  made 
King  Edward  a  sane  and  philosophic  observer. 
He  possessed  very  few  prejudices,  and  he  never 
allowed  his  feelings  as  a  man  to  stand  between 
him  and  his  duties  as  a  king.  But  if  his  personal 
views  had  affected  political  issues  it  would  never 
have  been  to  Germany's  detriment,  for  every  criti- 
cism that  I  heard  him  utter  over  a  long  period  of 
years  has  been  set  out  here.  He  had  a  real  love 
for  his  French  and  Austrian  friends  and  a  quiet 
respect  for  his  German  acquaintances.  I  may  add 
that  King  Edward  not  only  hated  war  and  would 
have  been  most  reluctant  to  take  any  step  that 
might  ensue  it,  but  he  regarded  people  with  belli- 
cose ideas  as  fit  occupants  of  asylums.  The  fine 
fabric  of  civilisation  impressed  him,  and  he  saw  in 
war  the  blind  force  that  would  destroy  it  and  leave 
the  world  laboriously  and  painfully  to  rebuild. 
His  real  interests  lay  in  the  direction  of  social  re- 
form, and  he  even  found  the  trappings  of  state, 
in  which  as  a  rule  he  took  delight,  a  little  heavy 


14  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

when  he  realised  that  they  deprived  him  of  the 
right  of  free  speech  enjoyed  by  the  humblest  citi- 
zen of  the  realm.  He  made  it  his  business  to  know 
what  Germany  was  doing  to  solve  the  problems  of 
unemployment,  housing,  and  factory  management, 
and  in  the  last  years  of  his  life  his  intercourse  with 
Liberal  statesmen  quickened  his  interest  in  plans 
for  the  betterment  of  the  class  that  does  the  work. 
Time  out  of  mind  he  spoke  of  what  Germany  had 
achieved  in  this  direction,  always  with  the  frank 
admiration  that  only  a  good  sportsman  can  give 
under  all  circumstances.  Far  from  seeking  to  bring 
war  about,  it  is  with  me  an  article  of  faith  that  had 
he  been  living  in  July,  1914,  there  would  have  been 
no  war.  The  immense  personal  influence  he 
wielded  would  have  been  thrown  into  the  scales  on 
the  side  of  peace,  he  would  have  reconciled  dif- 
ferences at  the  eleventh  hour  for  he  was  persona 
gratissima  in  every  court  of  Europe,  and  there  is 
not  among  the  rulers  of  Europe  one  who  would 
not  have  listened  when  he  spoke.  Those  who  sug- 
gest that  he  helped  to  build  the  pyre  upon  which 
the  best  and  bravest  of  nearly  all  the  nations  of 
the  world  are  now  being  consumed,  do  but  slander 
the  dead  and  testify  to  their  own  ignorance. 


II 

THE  GREATEST   FIGHT   OF  ALL 

In  his  famous  essay  on  ]Mr.  JMontgomery's  poems 
Macaulay  speaks  of  the  degradation  to  which  those 
must  submit  who  are  resolved  to  write  when  there 
are  scarcelj^  any  who  read. 

It  seems  a  httle  idle  to  suggest  that  two  years 
of  war  have  availed  to  reduce  readers  to  vanishing 
point;  indeed,  editors  and  publishers  of  daily  and 
weekly  papers  testify  to  an  increase  of  circulation. 
Paper  is  harder  to  obtain  than  readers;  the  cause 
of  trouble  is  that  the  written  word  is  all  of  one 
kind.  The  love  of  sensation,  strongest  amongst 
those  whose  mental  equipment  is  of  the  slightest, 
is  being  sedulously  catered  for,  the  townsman  re- 
quires tales  of  the  slaughter  of  his  enemies  to  give 
a  flavour  to  his  breakfast,  his  lunch,  and  his  dinner. 

Even  the  countryman,  who  with  no  more  than 
one  newspaper  in  twenty-four  hours  must  spread 
sensation  over  a  day,  seems  to  insist  upon  flam- 
boyant headlines  and  cheerful  tales  of  slaughter. 
JMild-mannered  folk,  who  would  turn  vegetarians 

rather  than  help  to  kill  the  meat  that  is  set  upon 

15 


16  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

their  tables,  may  be  heard  enthusiastically  calcu- 
lating the  enemy's  losses  in  terms  of  six  or  seven 
figures,  and  discussing  the  hairbreadth  incidents 
of  flood  and  field  as  though  they  themselves  car- 
ried a  more  dangerous  weapon  than  an  umbrella 
and  had  faced  more  serious  troubles  in  the  normal 
day  than  an  ill-cooked  meal,  an  appointment  lost, 
or  a  train  missed.  In  short,  people  who  must  stay 
at  home  because  they  are  no  longer  of  fighting 
age,  strength,  or  inclination,  are  being  encouraged 
to  act  as  the  audience.  Happily,  perhaps,  for 
them,  they  cannot  see  the  actual  performance,  but 
they  can  hear  about  it,  and,  as  a  rule,  they  are 
told  what  their  minds  are  best  prepared  to  receive. 
Truth  has  received  instructions  to  remain  at  the 
bottom  of  her  well  or  risk  court-martial.  Life  is 
reduced  to  its  primitive  elements ;  war,  while  it  dig- 
nifies many  of  those  who  take  an  active  part  in  it, 
does  little  more  than  degrade  the  constant  reader 
of  papers  of  the  baser  and  most  popular  kind.  It 
is  to  be  feared  that  the  sane  view  of  life  is  never 
the  appealing  one,  the  untrained  eye  can  see  trees 
but  never  a  wood,  and  the  man  in  the  street  is 
nearest  to  the  editorial  heart  because  his  name 
is  legion,  and  the  advertiser  says  to  him,  as  Ruth 
said  to  Naomi,  "Whither  thou  goest,  I  will  go." 
In  the  early  nineties  there  was  a  literary  move- 
ment of  great  promise  in  London;  the  Boer  War 


THE  GREATEST  FIGHT  OF  ALL  17 

extinguished  it;  in  the  last  half-dozen  years  we 
have  seen  a  brisk  effort  towards  the  development 
of  a  national  or  even  international  social  pro- 
gramme; this  war  may  set  it  back  for  a  generation; 
^Vav  is  ever  fjital  to  ideas.  Men  whose  minds  were 
being  turned  slowly  and  reluctantly  to  questions 
they  had  been  educated  to  ignore  are  now  con- 
cerned with  two  problems — winning  the  war  and 
making  good  the  injuries  it  has  entailed.  The  in- 
creased taxation,  the  business  losses,  seemingly  ir- 
recoverable, will  develop  a  certain  natural  hard- 
ness of  fibre,  and  there  is  a  danger  that  the  social 
movements,  slow  in  times  of  prosperity,  will  halt 
in  the  times  to  come. 

The  season  of  trouble  for  those  "resolved  to 
write"  is  upon  the  publicists  of  the  social  reform 
movement.  They  must  be  prepared  for  hard 
knocks  and  for  all  the  arts  of  misrepresentation 
and  vilification.  The  general  reader  will  first  de- 
nounce, then  ignore  and  finally  listen  to  the  sur- 
vivors of  the  common-sense  crusade.  The  people 
who  start  to  state  facts  will  be  the  leaders  of  a 
forlorn  hope,  and  our  brave  fellow-countrymen  did 
not  face  as  great  an  odds  in  the  retreat  from  Mons. 
A  fight  for  the  universal  reduction  of  armaments 
and  for  the  remodelling  of  the  existing  system  of 
goverrmient  will  be  met  by  indignant  cries  for  con- 
scription and  less  freedom.    The  ubiquitous  hand 


18  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

of  the  German  will  be  traced  in  every  line  that 
pleads  for  toleration,  good  will,  and  the  removal  of 
all  autocracies  under  whatever  name;  any  sugges- 
tion of  a  return  to  Christian  teaching  will  be  de- 
nounced as  the  highest  immorality.  There  are 
many  who  hold  that  a  conscript  Army  and  a  larger 
Navy  would  have  saved  us  from  this  war;  they 
cannot  see  that  we  should  have  done  no  more  than 
postpone  the  evil  day  until  it  dawned  upon  Eu- 
rope in  a  still  greater  magnitude  of  evil,  if  this  be 
possible,  and  that  our  commercial  class,  impeded 
by  forced  service,  would  have  been  unable  to  pro- 
vide the  means  to  pay  the  bill.  The  ulcer  of  Eu- 
ropean armament  has  burst  at  last,  and  the  remedy 
proposed  for  the  debilitated  body  of  the  Western 
World  will  be  a  still  larger  ulcer  to  take  the  place 
of  the  one  that  demanded  so  much  labour  to  feed 
and  so  much  life-blood  to  cleanse  it. 

In  the  same  way  the  effort  to  make  democracy 
articulate,  to  raise  the  standard  of  the  national 
intelligence,  will  be  fiercely  resisted  by  those  who 
believe  that  the  way  of  the  world  in  the  past  must 
be  the  way  of  the  world  in  the  future.  The  at- 
tempt to  improve  upon  the  methods  of  our  fathers 
is  tolerated  in  the  worlds  of  science,  medicine,  and 
commerce,  the  innate  conservatism  of  government 
is  sacrosanct.  To  educate  millions  of  able-bodied 
men,   not  to  the  fighting  pitch  but  beyond  and 


THE  GREATEST  FIGHT  OF  ALL  19 

above  it,  will  be  denounced  as  high  treason,  and 
will  be  opposed  by  autocracies,  bureaucracies, 
cannon-makers  and  publicans  alike.  A  rise  to  the 
heights  of  sanity  is,  must  be,  the  death  of  vested 
interests,  and  every  force  to  the  hands  of  author- 
ity will  be  employed  to  check  the  dreaded  move- 
ment. According  to  a  well-established  formula, 
the  method  of  attack  will  be  to  denounce  very  bit- 
terly suggestions  that  have  never  been  put  forward 
and  principles  that  have  no  adherents.  In  this 
way  issues  can  be  confused  and  obscured. 

To  be  drunk  w^th  victory  or  dazed  by  defeat 
is  to  be  particularly  sensitive  to  the  more  brutal 
cries  of  war.  The  victor  desires  the  full  reward 
of  good  fortune,  as  Germany  did  in  1871 ;  the  van- 
quished nurses  revenge,  as  France  has  done  ever 
since  the  end  of  the  struggle  that  found  her  so 
ill-prepared.  Counsels  of  moderation  are  declared 
to  be  inadmissible  until  the  status  quo  ante  has 
been  restored,  and  every  force  that  makes  for  the 
spoliation  of  the  simple  by  the  worldly  wise  takes 
the  field  against  common  sense.  The  appeal  of 
the  dead  is  forgotten  by  all  living  save  the  woman 
whose  mission  it  is  to  raise  another  generation  for 
destruction;  the  lessons  of  history  cannot  be  re- 
called by  those  who  have  never  learned  them. 

Against  all  the  difficulties  outlined  here,  and 
many  another  that  need  not  be  set  down,  a  small 


20  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

body  of  men  and  women,  inspired  by  a  great  ideal, 
must  labour  in  every  country  that  has  seen  war 
or  even  realised  its  significance.  They  must  speak 
and  write  in  the  face  of  fierce  opposition  and 
contempt,  for  war  has  swept  away  many  of  the 
landmarks  they  had  already  set  up,  together  with 
many  of  those  who  had  learned  to  regard  them; 
they  must  face  the  truth  that  many  a  genuine 
altruist,  shocked  unutterably  by  the  revelations  of 
the  war,  is  a  little  ashamed  of  his  earlier  altruism 
and  anxious  to  forget  its  existence.  They  must 
be  prepared  for  a  certain  coarsening  of  the  nation's 
moral  fibre,  for  a  long-lived  return  to  the  more 
brutal  outlook  associated  with  the  Napoleonic  era. 
In  some  countries  revenge  will  have  become  an  ar- 
ticle of  faith,  in  others  suspicion  will  be  a  no  less 
dominant  factor.  The  whole  mental  currency  will 
have  suffered  debasement,  and  it  will  be  difficult 
for  some  vices  to  be  recognised  as  anything  worse 
than  virtues  enforced  upon  a  nation  by  the  hazard 
of  war. 

If  the  truth  about  the  whole  conflict  that  has 
laid  waste  so  great  a  portion  of  the  civilised  world 
could  be  ascertained  and  agreed,  the  difficulties 
would  tend  to  disappear,  responsibility  would  be 
fixed.  Unfortunately,  agreement  is  beyond  the 
generation's  reach;  we  may  remember  that  there 
are  many  who  still  regard  the  seizure  of  Silesia  by 


THE  GREATEST  FIGHT  OF  ALL  21 

Frederick  the  Great  as  a  genuine  expression  of 
Prussia's  mission,  and  that  history  is  written  to 
suit  the  country  to  which  it  is  intended  to  appeaL 
Limitations,  whether  geographical,  political,  or  so- 
cial, are  the  sworn  foes  of  truth,  and  in  the  effort 
to  remove  them  an  appeal  to  international  com- 
mon sense  affords  the  best  hope  of  success. 

For  many  of  the  world's  thinkers  who  stay  at 
home  to-day,  neither  physically  fit  to  fight  nor 
financially  able  to  succour  distress,  there  is  this 
great  work  waiting  to  be  done.  They  cannot  fight 
soldiers,  but  they  can  fight  rancour,  malice,  and 
uncharitableness.  They  cannot  fill  hungry  bodies, 
but  they  may  help  to  feed  starved  minds.  They 
can  bring  a  light  to  those  who  walk  in  darkness 
and  make  articulate  the  thoughts  that  stir  many  a 
heart  and  brain.  They  can  give  courage  to  those 
who  fear  the  sound  of  their  own  voices  and  have 
not  the  strength  of  mind  to  say  the  words  that 
may  not  be  spoken  without  offence  to  the  unthink- 
ing. When  fighting  is  over — and  it  will  pass,  as 
all  tragedies  must,  though  it  seems  to  fill  a  life- 
time while  it  lasts — the  greatest  questions  of  strife 
will  clamour  for  a  wise  solution.  People  write 
glibly  about  the  war  that  is  to  end  war,  but  let 
us  remember  that  this  issue  depends  not  upon 
statesmen  but  upon  the  democracies  of  all  the  com- 
batant and  neutral  countries.    WTiat  we  want  is  a 


22  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

modern  Peter  the  Hermit  or  two  in  every  coun- 
try of  Europe,  to  preach  the  crusade  of  Christi- 
anity and  to  bring  home  to  the  world  at  large  the 
price  of  war.  There  is  no  material  reward  for 
this  service,  and  even  recognition  is  likely  to  be 
posthumous;  the  courage  required  is  of  the  fine 
kind  that  moves  alone  over  uncharted  ground.  But, 
just  as  a  kingdom  at  war  calls  for  men  to  man 
the  trenches  and  face  annihilation  with  the  smiling 
cheerfulness  that  robs  death  of  half  its  sting  and 
all  its  terror,  so  a  return  of  peace  calls  for  its  heroes 
of  thought  to  do  battle  with  all  the  evils  that  make 
it  possible  for  men  who  have  no  quarrel  to  assem- 
ble in  their  millions  for  mutual  destruction. 

The  whole  system  of  government  that  makes 
these  conditions  and  must  be  indicted  for  them  is 
rotten  to  the  core,  but  it  is  enthroned  in  power, 
and  will  not  deal  lightly,  or  even  justly,  with  those 
who  assail  it. 

Against  this  hard  truth  we  have  to  remember 
that  every  evil  that  has  been  subdued  since  the 
dawn  of  history  has  been  fought  in  the  first  instance 
by  one  man  or  a  handful  of  men.  If  we  have  only 
a  small  proportion  of  thinkers  to-day  we  have  more 
than  there  were  of  old  time,  when  the  simplest 
education  was  the  advantage  of  the  few.  Pagan- 
ism was  a  more  terrible  force  than  militarism  in  the 
years  of  the  advent  of  Christ,  and  it  was  over- 


THE  GREATEST  FIGHT  OF  ALL  23 

thrown  by  the  labours  of  one  man  and  his  tiny  fol- 
lowing. To-day  democracy  is  all  powerful,  if  and 
when  it  can  be  taught  to  ojoen  eyes  and  ears.  Those 
who  will  undertake  the  perilous  task  may  make  this 
war,  whatever  and  whenever  its  termination,  a 
fruitful  thing  for  the  generations  to  come,  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  if  the  lessons  are  not  read  aright, 
we  may  look  to  pass  from  tragedy  to  tragedy,  until 
all  civilisation  is  submerged. 


Ill 

England's  drink  legislation 

It  is  hard  to  pierce  the  thick  cloud  of  cant  in  which, 
as  a  nation,  we  are  all  too  apt  to  shroud  ourselves. 
I  do  not  think  we  are  hypocritical,  although  that 
charge  is  laid  to  our  door  by  all  our  ill-wishers, 
but  I  do  believe  we  are  hopelessly  conventional, 
and  seldom  muster  up  the  courage  necessary  to  call 
a  spade  a  spade. 

I  have  been  re-reading  of  late,  the  endless  com- 
ment upon  the  drink  legislation,  some  of  it  frankly 
inspired  by  publicans  and  sinners — I  mean  distil- 
lers— some  of  it  the  pure  outpouring  of  cranks, 
most  of  it  prejudiced,  or  uninformed,  or  both.  We 
deplore  drunken  habits,  but  when  Sir  Cuthbert 
Quilter  tried  to  persuade  Parliament  to  pass  a 
Pure  Beer  Bill  he  met  with  no  success.  The  worst 
crimes  against  the  person,  the  common  and  crimi- 
nal assaults  on  women  and  children,  are  largely 
due  to  drink,  and  of  this  drink  raw  and  crude 
spirits  are  the  worst  part;  but  we  do  nothing  to 
protect  our  poorer  classes  from  the  poison.  To  in- 
troduce "square  face"  gin  among  the  black  popu- 

24 


ENGLAND'S  DRINK  LEGISLATION  25 

lation  of  some  of  our  possessions  is  a  deadly  of- 
fence, the  punishment  is  heavy,  swift,  and  certain, 
but  to  poison  the  workers  of  our  great  manufac- 
turing centres  is  business,  and  many  quite  worthy 
people  believe  that  "when  Britain  first  at  Heaven's 
command  arose  from  out  the  azure  main"  it  was 
to  do  business,  and  as  much  of  it  as  possible.  Nat- 
urally it  follows  that  the  fight  against  cant  is  all 
the  harder  because  most  of  us  do  not  recognise  cant 
when  we  hear  it.  I  remember  how  when  temper- 
ance legislation  was  first  mooted  as  a  war  measure 
many  friends  who  can  afford  to  buy  pure  French 
wines  and  spirits  of  great  age  and  mellowness  sol- 
emnly assured  me  that  temperance  legislation  is 
mere  foolishness,  and  that  they  themselves  are  liv- 
ing proofs  that  moderation,  good  health,  and  a  wise 
activity  march  hand-in-hand. 

But  of  late  years  a  certain  number  of  women  of 
all  classes  have  been  drinking  more  than  is  good 
for  them,  and  since  the  war  broke  out  the  work- 
ing women's  temptations  in  this  direction  and  the 
opportunity  to  indulge  them  have  grown  side  by 
side. 

The  majority  of  workinof  women  are  as  sober 
as  the  majority  of  every  class,  but,  though  there 
are  thousands  of  temperate  women,  they  are 
matched  by  thousands  of  intemperate  ones,  the 
number  has  grown  apace,  and  I  feel  they  should 


26  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

be  saved  from  themselves.  The  sober  classes  can- 
not resent  restriction.  It  leaves  them  where  they 
were.  The  intemperate  classes  may  resent  restric- 
tion, but  it  remains  necessary  in  their  own  interests. 

I  don't  suppose  many  people  read  Harrison 
Ainsworth's  novels  to-day,  but  I  remember  a  strik- 
ing passage  in  "Jack  Sheppard,"  where  Mrs.  Shep- 
pard  justifies  herself  to  her  friend  Wood,  the  car- 
penter, who  has  told  her  that  Gin-lane  is  the  near- 
est road  to  the  churchyard.    It  is  worth  quoting — 

"It  may  be;  but  if  it  shortens  the  distance  and 
lightens  the  journey  I  care  not,"  retorted  the 
widow.  .  .  .  "The  spirit  I  drink  may  be  poison — 
it  may  kill  me — perhaps  it  is  killing  me,  but  so 
would  hunger,  cold,  misery — so  would  my  own 
thoughts.  I  should  have  gone  mad  without  it. 
Gin  is  the  poor  man's  friend — his  sole  set-oif 
against  the  rich  man's  luxury.  .  .  .  When  worse 
than  all,  frenzied  with  want,  I  have  yielded  to  hor- 
rible temptation  and  earned  a  meal  the  only  way 
I  could  earn  one  ...  I  have  drunk  of  this  drink 
and  forgotten  my  cares,  my  poverty,  and  my 
guilt." 

The  working  women  whose  husbands  are  at  the 
war  have  many  excuses.  They  are  deprived  of 
their  husbands,  and — though  there  is  no  need  to 
emphasise  the  point  it  cannot  be  overlooked — their 
lives  are  a  drab  monotony  of  toil,  their  surround- 


ENGLAND'S  DRINK  LEGISLATION  27 

ings  are  often  of  the  most  unfavourable  descrip- 
tion, the  only  restraint  that  can  reach  them  is  self- 
restraint,  and  their  training  has  done  little  to  pro- 
vide it.  The  public-house  offers  companionship,  a 
brief  surcease  of  anxiety,  light  and  warmth.  JNIany 
are  enervated  by  much  child-bearing,  worn  out  by 
much  house  or  factory  work.  They  meet  tempta- 
tion and  succumb,  but  let  us  remember  that  in 
classes  removed  from  the  same  form  of  temptation 
there  is  no  lack  of  intemperance.  A  very  small 
dose  of  bad  spirits  is  enough  to  provide  the  cheap 
anodyne  some  are  seeking,  and  under  the  influence 
of  drink  they  are  apt  to  lose  their  self-respect. 
The  craving  for  drink  grows  with  what  it  feeds 
on,  and  in  all  too  many  cases  the  hold  upon  self- 
respect  falters  and  is  lost.  We  have  sent  very 
many  men  to  the  war,  but  enough  and  more  than 
enough  remain  behind  to  take  advantage  of  women 
who  have  lost  all  or  even  a  part  of  their  normal 
control. 

In  touch  with  serious  workers  in  many  of  the 
fields  of  endeavour  that  make  brief  oases  in  the 
deserts  of  industrialism,  I  know  that  both  drink 
and  prostitution  have  increased  since  war  began, 
and  I  know  that  drink  is  the  great  support  of 
prostitution,  and  that  thousands  of  women  of  the 
class  we  must  pity  most  have  a  natural  sense  of 
shame  that  drink  destroys.    If  the  demons  of  ruin 


28  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

— gin  and  whisky — had  not  been  busy  pouring 
gold  into  the  national  treasury,  day  by  day  and 
year  by  year,  they  would  have  been  exorcised  long 
since.  But  business  is  business,  and  the  gentle- 
men whose  activity  corrupts  the  country  can  al- 
ways talk  of  freedom  and  liberty,  and  declare  to 
thunders  of  applause  that  Britons  never  shall  be 
slaves.  The  possibility  of  being  free  to  be  a  slave 
to  drink  never  occurs  to  them,  or  if  it  does  they 
forget  to  mention  it. 

But  while  I  welcome  legislation  that  will  tend 
to  keep  women  sober,  and  believe  that  our  sex 
stands  in  need  of  more  sobriety  by  reason  of  its 
sedentary  life,  I  am  far  from  thinking  that  the 
law  that  is  good  for  women  i"?  necessarily  good 
for  man.  The  conditions  are  altogether  different. 
The  self-respecting  artisan  and  skilled  worker 
drink  less  than  ever  they  di(i.  The  men  who  are 
doing  the  country's  work  to-day  in  all  the  arma- 
ment manufacturing  areas  need  a  stimulant,  need 
it  far  more  than  the  prosperous  City  man,  the  real 
toper  of  our  times.  He  will  drink  champagne  and 
whisky  with  his  lunch,  and,  having  had  quite 
enough  of  both,  will  damn  the  working  classes  for 
being  given  to  the  use  of  intoxicants.  I  have  been 
through  some  of  those  great  works  in  the  north, 
where  labour  at  and  round  the  furnaces  is  unre- 
mitting, and  where  to-day  the  pace  has  been  in- 


ENGLAND'S  DRINK  LEGISLATION  29 

creased  to  the  extreme  limit  of  physical  power. 
To  preach  temperance  to  the  armament  worker  is 
an  absurdity;  if  he  is  not  to  be  stimulated  accord- 
ing to  his  needs  his  hours  will  need  to  be  greatly 
diminished;  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  give  out 
unless  he  takes  in.  Why,  in  the  name  of  all  that 
is  sensible,  should  lie  not  have  that  which  will  help 
him?  Why  should  he  have  remained  so  long  at 
the  mercy  of  cheap,  vile  spirits  that  are  a  more 
or  less  effective  poison?  Why  should  he  be  at  the 
mercy  of  the  people  who,  having  little  hard  work 
to  do,  can  thrive  comfortably  upon  lemonade  and 
barley  water?  The  manufacturers  spare  no  pains 
to  obtain  the  very  finest  material  for  their  own 
work;  if  it  is  necessary  to  spend  a  few  or  many 
thousands  of  pounds  upon  new  plant  the  money  is 
forthcoming  without  a  murmur.  Does  it  pass  the 
wit  of  these  sapient  people  to  give  to  humanity 
a  little  of  the  thought  they  give  to  raw  material? 
Can  they  not  see  that  the  best  and  purest  drink 
that  the  new  regulations  permit  is  within  reach 
of  the  workers,  and  that  the  rest  is  out  of  reach? 
It  has  long  been  the  custom  of  the  capitalist  class 
in  normal  times  to  give  the  workman  bad  drink 
with  one  hand  and  to  raise  the  other  hand  with 
an  expression  of  holy  horror  against  the  sin  of 
drunkenness,  quite  ignoring  the  truth  that  the 
quality,  rather  than  the  quantity,  that  people  drink 


30  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

is  often  the  deciding  factor — that  every  class 
drinks,  and  that  if  the  vice  looks  worse  in  one  class 
than  another  it  is  because  the  poorer  the  man  or 
woman,  the  viler  the  alcohol  supplied  to  them. 
There  are  so  many  excellent  people  who  preach 
temperance  and  live  on  the  dividends  of  drunken- 
ness, there  are  so  many  who  believe  that  a  rea- 
sonable excess  in  matters  of  drink  is  a  form  of 
manly  virtue,  and  there  are  yet  more  who  believe 
honestly  in  moderation,  and  do  not  see  that  their 
good  brand  of  claret,  burgundy,  or  brandy  should 
be  denied  to  them,  seeing  they  have  never  abused  it. 

For  myself,  I  drink  a  glass  of  good  wine;  fail- 
ing that  I  am  content  with  pure  water.  If  we 
could  give  our  working  classes  nothing  but  the 
best,  and  at  a  price  within  their  means,  I  should 
look  askance  at  legislation,  of  whatever  kind;  but 
I  recognise  the  old  truth  that  the  destruction  of 
the  poor  is  their  poverty,  and  that  the  working 
man  and  w^oman  have  always  been  penalised,  and 
will  continue  to  be,  until  Government  recognises 
its  responsibilities,  and  rides  its  supporters  of  the 
drink  trade  with  a  very  tight  rein. 

Above  all  I  feel  that  the  new  legislation  that 
has  first  restricted  and  then  diluted  the  working 
man's  drink  must  not  be  regarded  as  an  isolated 
instance,  but  as  part  of  the  vast  changes  that  the 
war  will  ensue.    The  working  man  will  not  forego 


ENGLAND'S  DRINK  LEGISLATION  31 

his  legitimate  refreshment;  it  is  for  the  Govern- 
ment to  see  that  it  is  pure  and  reasonably  harmless. 
Good  beer  in  moderation  will  not  hurt  anybody; 
bad  spirits  are  the  foundation  of  disease  and  crime, 
and,  in  their  silent  fashion,  are  always  fighting 
against  the  best  interests  of  the  State.  Sometimes, 
when  I  read  that  the  perpetrator  of  some  ghastly 
crime  has  been  sentenced  to  death  or  a  long  term 
of  imprisonment,  with  all  the  pomp  and  circum- 
stance of  our  criminal  courts,  I  find  myself  wonder- 
ing what  poison  was  administered  to  him  in  some 
squalid  public-house,  and  who  among  those  who 
rejoice  that  justice  has  been  done,  or  vengeance 
executed,  have  actually  derived  financial  benefit 
from  the  drink  that  turned  a  man  into  a  beast. 
We  punish  the  poor  fool  with  a  diseased  appetite, 
we  confer  some  honour  or  reward  upon  the  prime 
offender.  Then  when  our  enemies  say  that  we  are 
hypocrites  we  are  indignant  because  of  their  in- 
justice, or  contemptuous  of  their  ignorance,  know- 
ing as  we  do,  that  God  is  in  Heaven,  and  that 
business  is  business. 

Finally,  and  quite  apart  from  the  immediate 
significance  of  the  drink  question,  I  rejoice  in  any 
legislation  that  will  help  the  working-classes  to  the 
full  possession  of  their  faculties.  If  drink  helps 
them  to  forget  intolerable  surroundings,  insufficient 
pay,   the  deprivation  of  their   fair  share  of  the 


S2  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

world's  beauties,  let  us  be  glad  that  it  is  taken 
from  them  in  its  worst  forms.  They  will  see  with 
clear  eyes  and  with  wiser  heads,  they  will  no  longer 
be  at  the  mercy  of  those  who  pander  to  their  weak- 
ness in  order  to  keep  them  weak.  They  will  en- 
ter upon  the  great  struggle  that  lies  before  democ- 
racy with  stronger  will  and  stronger  armour.  They 
have  surrendered  much  of  their  power  to  the  pub- 
lic-house, and  the  longer  its  shutters  are  up  the 
more  leisure  they  will  have  to  see  that  there  are 
better  things  in  life,  the  greater  will  be  their  de- 
termination to  share  them  with  the  fortunate 
classes. 

There  is  a  time  of  trouble  in  store;  they  cannot 
be  too  well  equipped  to  meet  it. 


IV 

WAR   AND    [MARRIAGE 

The  problem  that  faces  a  State  when  it  sends  its 
best  and  most  virile  men  to  kill  and  to  be  killed 
has  certain  aspects  that  few  have  the  courage  to 
handle.  For  long  years,  while  Europe  was  an 
armed  camp,  the  claims  of  love  were  admitted  amid 
the  demands  of  war,  but  now  that  the  dreaded  era 
— which  each  nation  was  hurrying  through  the  me- 
dium of  extravagant  armaments  and  secret  diplo- 
macy— has  come  upon  us,  we  are  without  a  defi- 
nite plan  for  securing  the  continuity  of  the  best 
elements  in  the  race.  If  I  thought  that  this  ap- 
palling war  were  no  more  than  the  prelude  to 
others,  I  would  pray  that  every  woman  might  be 
sterile,  but  hope,  our  last  and  eternal  refuge  against 
the  ills  of  life,  suggests  that  this  most  terrible 
cataclysm  will  strengthen  the  hands  of  democracy 
and  give  it  the  strength  to  resist  further  sacrifices 
in  years  to  come.  While  the  grass  grows  the  horse 
starves,  and  while  we  think  of  the  generation  to 
come,  thousands,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Eu- 
rope's best  and  bravest  lie  in  their  hasty  graves, 

33 


34  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

and  the  cry  of  Mother  Earth  is  still  "they  come." 
What  has  been  done  by  our  rulers  to  see  that  the 
fittest  shall  leave  behind  them  some  to  take  a  share 
of  the  white  man's  burden? 

Very  little.  The  men  of  the  middle  and  upper 
classes  who  happened  to  be  engaged  have  in  very 
many  cases  been  wise  and  patriotic  enough  to 
marry,  and  their  wives  have  proved  themselves  as 
full  of  courage  as  of  love.  In  order  to  marry,  men 
have  often  been  obliged  to  pay  the  Church  an  ab- 
surd tax,  for  the  Church  has  shown  itself  quite 
inadequate  to  the  occasion,  and  trumpery  restric- 
tions, meaningless  in  times  of  peace  and  a  scandal 
in  time  of  war,  have  not  been  relaxed.  The  poor 
man  cannot  afford  a  special  license,  and  in  many 
instances  has  married  without  the  aid  or  sanction 
of  the  Church.  As  we  know,  the  State  decided 
to  recognise  the  unmarried  wives  of  the  nation's 
brave  defenders,  a  courageous  and  proper  step  that 
evoked  the  wildest  protests  from  the  narrow- 
minded,  the  "unco  guid,"  and  the  fanatics  who  be- 
lieve that  man  was  made  for  morality  rather  than 
that  morality  was  made  for  man.  They  did  not 
pause  to  reflect  that  our  absurd  and  antiquated 
divorce  laws  are  the  chief  cause  of  illicit  unions, 
and  that  divorce  is  hardly  less  hard  for  the  poor  to 
obtain  than  are  decent  housing,  warm  clothing, 
and  nourishing  food.    Happily,  in  making  this  con- 


WAR  AND  MARRIAGE  35 

cession  to  the  men  who  are  offering  their  lives  to 
their  country,  the  genius  of  red  tape  contrived  to 
assert  itself.  Hard  though  it  may  be  to  realise, 
it  was  for  some  time  a  fact  that,  if  a  man  home 
on  leave  married  his  unmarried  wife  in  order  that 
his  children  might  bear  his  name,  his  wife's  al- 
lowance ceased  because  he  came  under  the  head  of 
those  who  married  after  enlisting!  The  very  quin- 
tessence of  stupidity  could  have  achieved  nothing 
finer. 

Unfortunately  the  majority  of  those  at  the  front 
are  unmarried.  It  was  considered  sufficient  to  find 
them  physically  sound,  to  vaccinate  and  inoculate 
them  and  then  to  send  them  to  take  their  chance. 
The  question  of  the  years  to  come  was  never  con- 
sidered. There  is  no  department  of  War  Office 
or  Admiralty  that  embraces  eugenics.  I  have 
looked  in  vain  through  the  speeches  of  statesmen 
for  a  single  recommendation  to  our  defenders  to 
marry  and  leave  behind  them  some  pledge  of  their 
affection,  some  asset  for  the  real  national  treas- 
ury that  does  not  consist  of  gold,  as  is  popularly 
supposed,  but  of  vigorous  men  and  women  as  anx- 
ious to  live  for  their  country  as  they  are  willing 
to  die  for  it.  To  be  sure  every  wife  would  have 
cost  the  country  three  pounds  a  month  for  the 
term  of  the  war,  and  this  thought  may  have  given 
our  prudent  legislators  pause ;  but  I  venture  to  sug- 


36  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

gest  that  a  wife  as  a  national  asset  is  cheap,  even 
at  that  price. 

The  balance  has  been  redressed  to  some  extent, 
in  fashion  at  once  inevitable  and  unsatisfactory. 
The  billeting  of  great  masses  of  virile  young  men 
in  various  centres  throughout  the  country,  and  the 
opportunities  that  the  new  life  has  afforded  re- 
sulted in  an  increase  in  the  number  of  illegitimate 
births.  I  have  heard  of  this  from  many  quarters, 
and  have  every  reason  to  believe,  in  spite  of  de- 
nials, that  no  district  in  which  large  numbers  of 
soldiers  have  been  gathered  together  will  prove  an 
exception  to  the  general  rule.  Whatever  the  moral 
aspect  of  the  question,  it  cannot  be  overlooked  or 
ignored.  I  deplore  the  promiscuity,  ..hough  I  be- 
lieve that  a  wise  and  daring  statesmanship,  ready 
to  meet  new  conditions  with  new  remedies,  would 
have  avoided  it;  but  I  would  like  to  plead  for  the 
foolish  mothers,  often  little  more  than  girls,  and 
for  the  babes,  who  in  many  instances  will  never  see 
a  father's  fare, 

I  am  not  urging  humanity  in  place  of  morality, 
for  most  people  lack  the  moral  courage  to  listen 
to  such  a  plea;  it  is  rather  in  the  interests  of  the 
State  that  I  urge  the  proper,  and  even  generous, 
treatment  of  all  those  who,  before  this  year  is  ended, 
will  have  entered  the  world  unwanted  and  unwel- 
comed.     They  will  be  the  children  of  men  in  the 


WAR  AND  MARRIAGE  37 

first  flush  of  manhood,  of  men  not  lacking  in  cour- 
age and  character  (or  they  would  not  have  joined 
the  colours),  of  men  whose  fault  was  that  they 
could  not  resist  temptation  in  its  least  resistible 
form.  We  must  think  of  the  psychology  of  the 
soldier  who  knows  that  in  a  few  short  weeks  he 
may  be  among  the  nameless  dead,  who  has  em- 
barked upon  the  greatest  of  all  adventures,  and 
says,  "Let  me  rejoice  and  be  merry,  for  to-mor- 
row I  die."  Doubtless  in  many  cases  he  will  return 
and  marry  the  mother  of  his  child  if  fate  permits, 
often  he  will  not  return,  and  a  soldier's  death  may 
well  clear  a  soldier's  name. 

It  should  not  outrage  morality  to  see  that  the 
children,  whether  they  be  many  or  few,  born  of 
men  gone  to  the  front  should  be  looked  after  by 
the  State  where  the  mother  is  unable  adequately 
to  provide  for  them,  and  it  should  be  possible,  too, 
in  cases  where  the  father  returns  and  marries  the 
mother  of  his  child,  that  such  marriage  should  make 
the  offspring  legitimate.  It  is  not  a  large  conces- 
sion; in  many  European  countries,  France  in- 
cluded, marriage  atones  for  previous  indiscretions, 
and  if  this  were  so  in  England  there  would  be  a 
much  greater  tendency  to  regularise  irregular 
unions  for  the  children's  sake.  If  nothing  is  done 
hundreds  of  young  mothers  who  succumbed  to  ex- 
ceptional temptation  will  be  outcasts.    Under  the 


38  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

most  favourable  normal  conditions,  the  lot  of  the 
little  one  will  be  hard.  When  this  hideous  war 
is  over,  I  would  like  the  regimental  officers  to  put 
the  facts  fairly  and  squarely  to  their  men,  to  ask 
them  to  remember  the  girls  they  left  behind  them, 
and  to  be  able  to  assure  them,  in  the  name  of  the 
Government,  that  if  they  would,  on  their  return, 
marry  the  mother  of  their  child,  that  child  would 
become  ipso  facto  legitimate. 

I  am  quite  sure  that  many  excellent  people  will 
find  this  plea  immoral,  that  they  will  say  it  is  con- 
doning irregular  sex  union,  that  it  is  removing  the 
burden  from  those  who  have  transgressed.  I  deny 
these  suggestions  even  before  they  are  made.  To 
my  mind  there  is  more  immorality,  more  glaring 
offence  to  the  Creator  in  one  battlefield  full  of 
dead  and  mangled  humanity,  than  in  all  the  illegit- 
imate children  who  will  have  come  crying  into 
our  tear-stricken  world  before  the  war  draws  to  its 
end.  Those  who  rule  over  Europe  and,  being  un- 
able to  settle  their  differences,  sent  millions  of  men, 
who  have  no  quarrel,  to  deface  the  earth  and 
slaughter  one  another,  are  morally  responsible  for 
every  change  in  the  normal  life  of  mankind.  Those 
who  replenish  the  earth  are  better  than  those  who 
destroy  it. 

War  is  a  monstrous  immorality  that  seeks  to  de- 
stroy the  world;  the  illicit  unions,  to  which  I  re- 


WAR  AND  MARRIAGE  39 

fer  in  the  interest  of  those  who  pay  the  penalty — 
the  mother  and  the  child — are  a  minor  immorality 
from  which,  with  a  little  care,  a  little  loving-kind- 
ness, and  a  little  fore-knowledge,  much  good,  much 
deep  morality  may  spring. 

There  is  not  much  time  to  lose ;  there  will  be  much 
opposition  to  overcome,  and  the  work  of  helping 
the  helpless  will  be  widely  condemned  by  those  who, 
having  no  feelings,  are  always  able  to  control  them. 
But  the  effort  is  worth  making,  and  so  I  plead 
here,  first,  for  ample  facilities  for  those  who  wish 
to  marry  before  they  go  abroad;  secondly,  for  the 
legitimation  of  the  children  whose  fathers,  now  at 
the  war,  come  back  and  marry  the  mothers,  and, 
lastly,  for  some  special  care  of  the  mother  and  chil- 
dren themselves. 


V 

NURSING   IN   WAR  TIME 

Abuses  cling  to  a  crisis  as  barnacles  to  a  ship,  and 
every  aspect  of  war  has  its  own  peculiar  abuses. 
While  millions  do  their  duty  with  quiet  heroism, 
there  is  always  a  minority  that  takes  advantage, 
that  corrupts  others — or  itself.  Some  believe  that 
fraud  and  foolishness  stay  at  home,  that  they  can- 
not approach  the  field  of  arms,  but  this  is  far  from 
being  the  case. 

My  thoughts  turn  back  to  the  South  African 
war,  when  certain  scandals  were  supposed  to  have 
reached  their  zenith;  I  look  around  me  to-day, 
listen  to  the  well-authenticated  stories  brought  to 
me  by  relatives  and  friends,  and  know  that  South 
Africa  did  not  tithe  the  possibilities  of  folly  and 
excess.  For  once  I  am  not  pleading  for  my  own 
sex,  I  plead  for  one  part  of  it  against  the  other, 
for  a  majority  against  a  minority,  for  those  who 
are  doing  what  they  are  paid  to  do,  against  those 
who  are  voluntary  workers.  The  position  comes 
a  little  strangely  to  me  when  I  look  at  it  in  this 
light,  but  the  highly  trained,  conscientious,  pains- 

40 


NURSING  IN  WAR  TIME  41 

taking  hospital  nurse,  whose  patient  heroism  pro- 
claims her  a  true  follower  of  Florence  Nightingale, 
has  been  exposed  to  scandalous  annoyance  for  no 
good  purpose  and  to  no  useful  end,  and  I  feel  that 
I  must  plead  her  cause,  since  she  is  in  the  last  de- 
gree unlikely  to  plead  it  for  herself. 

Society  women  of  a  certain  class  made  them- 
selves so  notorious  in  the  military  hospitals  and 
elsewhere  during  the  South  African  war  that  at 
least  one  General  threatened  to  send  them  home 
and  another  refused  to  allow  any  more  to  come 
out.  As  soon  as  the  greatest  sti*uggle  of  our  his- 
tory started  in  August,  1914,  certain  women  of 
means  and  position  proceeded  as  silently  and  un- 
ostentatiously as  was  possible  under  the  circum- 
stances to  equip  hospitals  and  to  set  about  their 
self-appointed  work.  They  laboured  conscien- 
tiously and  sought  no  more  publicity  than  was  nec- 
essary to  enable  them  to  collect  money  from  phil- 
anthropists and  friends.  They  did  their  best,  some 
were  already  qualified  by  previous  experience, 
others  acquired  their  knowledge  under  the  most 
trying  conditions  possible.  They  have  worked 
since  war  began,  well  content  to  "scorn  delights 
and  live  laborious  days,"  some  who  are  near  and 
dear  to  me  have  said  that  they  have  well-nigh  for- 
gotten the  old  life  and  the  comforts  they  deemed 
indispensable  only  a  little  while  ago.     I  think  it 


42  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

may  be  claimed  for  them  that  they  have  played 
a  good  part,  and  that  in  helping  others  they  have 
not  sought  to  draw  attention  to  themselves  or  min- 
imise the  credit  due  to  the  trained  sisterhood  of 
love  and  pity  that  cheers  the  wounded  and  comforts 
the  dying  as  "The  Lady  with  the  Lamp"  taught 
them  to  do  in  the  far-off  days  of  the  great  Cri- 
mean struggle.  They  have  made  many  friends  and 
no  enemies;  the  hero  of  the  trenches  and  the  as- 
saulting party  has  not  given  more  to  his  country, 
for  both  have  given  their  all,  the  man  his  strength, 
the  woman  her  practical  sympathy,  and  both  a  high 
degree  of  physical  and  moral  courage. 

Unfortunately  there  is  in  London  to-day  a  very 
large  company  of  young  women  to  whom  war  was 
little  more  than  a  new  sensation.  They  are  not 
old  enough  to  understand  or  young  enough  to  be 
restrained.  In  normal  times  they  must  be  "in  the 
movement,"  however  foolish  that  movement  may 
be,  and  a  war  that  staggers  the  old  world  and 
the  new  leaves  them  very  much  where  they  were 
before.  Under  the  rose  they  have  not  diminished 
their  aforetime  gaiety,  dances  and  dinner-parties 
have  been  the  order  of  the  hour.  They  have  not 
been  trumpeted  by  the  section  of  the  Press  that 
delights  in  recording  vain  things,  but  those  who 
view  the  currents  of  London's  social  life  know  that 
I  am  writing  the  simple  truth.    There  is  nothing 


NURSING  IN  WAR  TIME  43 

to  be  said;  let  those  laugh  who  may  and  can  at 
such  a  season,  their  laughter  proclaims  them  what 
they  are. 

Unfortunately  the  people  I  have  in  mind  have 
not  been  content  to  devote  themselves  to  brainless 
frivolity  because  they  must  sample  every  sensation 
that  the  seasons  provide,  they  invaded  the  sanc- 
tuary of  the  hospital  nurse.  Scores  found  their 
way  to  the  great  London  hospitals  in  town  to  face 
what  they  were  pleased  to  regard  as  training;  I 
have  known  some  who  have  danced  till  3  a.m.  and 
have  presented  themselves  at  the  hospital  at  8 
o'clock!  Everybody  knows  that  the  training  of  a 
real  hospital  nurse  is  a  very  serious  matter,  that 
it  makes  full  demand  upon  physical  and  mental 
capacity,  and  that  a  long  period  is  required  to 
bring  the  seed  of  efficiency  to  flower  or  fruit.  The 
social  butterflies  made  no  such  sacrifices;  they  ac- 
quired a  trifling  and  superficial  knowledge  of  a 
nurse's  work,  and  then  set  their  social  influence  to 
work  in  order  to  reach  some  one  of  the  base  hos- 
pitals where  they  might  sample  fresh  experience. 
If  they  were  really  useful  there  it  would  be  un- 
kind to  offer  a  protest,  but  the  general  opinion  is 
that  they  did  more  harm  than  good.  They  sub- 
verted discipline,  they  were  a  law  to  themselves, 
they  were  too  highly  placed  or  protected  to  be 
called  to  order  promptly,  they  showed  neither  the 


44  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

inclination  nor  the  capacity  for  sustained  useful- 
ness. To  sit  at  the  end  of  a  bed  and  smoke  ciga- 
rettes with  a  wounded  officer  does  not  develop  the 
efficiency  of  a  hospital. 

One  heard  repeatedly  in  the  early  months  of 
the  war  that  this  girl  or  that  had  gone  to  the  front, 
and  one  imagined  devotion,  self-sacrifice,  self-re- 
straint, and  a  dozen  kindred  virtues.  Unfortu- 
nately it  is  chiefly  in  the  realm  of  imagination  that 
these  virtues  existed.  For  the  rest  the  interlopers 
wanted  limelight,  and  plenty  of  it,  their  pictures 
flooded  the  illustrated  papers,  and  to  read  what 
was  written  of  them  the  inexperienced  person  might 
imagine  that  they  were  bearing  the  heat  and  burden 
of  the  day,  the  solitude  and  anxiety  of  the  night, 
while  in  very  truth  they  did  no  more  than  search 
for  fresh  sensation  in  an  area  that  should  be  sacred. 

The  type  of  mind  that  can  seek  refuge  from  self 
and  boredom  in  such  surroundings  cannot  be 
stricken  into  seriousness;  tragedy  cannot  reach  it. 
To  do  a  very  minimum  of  work,  to  attach  them- 
selves to  the  most  "attractive"  cases,  to  carry  small 
talk,  gabble  and  gossip  into  places  where  so  many 
come  to  die,  these  were  the  main  efforts  of  the 
yonnp"  society  nurses,  and  all  these  outrages  were 
carried  on  for  months  on  end.  The  real  nurses  and 
sisters  were,  I  am  told,  bitterly  indignant.  They 
asked  no  more  than  to  be  left  alone  to  do  their 


NURSING  IN  WAR  TIME  45 

best;  but  they  knew  how  hard  it  is  to  make  an 
effective  protest,  and  they  had  little  or  no  time  to 
do  so.  They  recognised  by  reason  of  their  train- 
ing, the  full  motive  of  the  excursion  into  the  re- 
gion of  suffering;  that  craving  for  excitement,  or, 
in  bad  cases,  erotomania  was  the  motive  power. 
They  found  their  work  impeded  by  the  sisterhood 
of  impostors  that  responds  so  readily  to  a  fashion 
of  its  own  making,  and  their  chief  hope  was  that 
this  sensation  might  pass  as  so  many  others  have 
passed,  and  that  the  brainless,  chattering,  thought- 
less, empty  company,  tired  of  blood  and  wounds, 
would  find  some  paramount  attraction  nearer  home. 
If  there  are  any  who  are  prepared  to  think  I 
have  overstated  the  case  or  have  traduced  the  young 
women  who  were  lately  "somewhere  in  France," 
let  them  find  out  from  their  particular  heroine  how 
much  time  she  gave  to  training,  how  she  received 
her  appointment,  and  how  much  real  hard  work  she 
did  day  by  day.  That  a  few  have  striven  hard  and 
nobly  I  would  be  the  last  to  deny,  but  these  are 
not  enough  either  to  leaven  or  purify  the  mass  or 
to  elevate  the  action  of  a  class  that  might  have 
been  better  employed.  I^et  us  remember,  too,  that 
suffering  is  always  with  us,  and  that  even  when 
war  is  over  there  will  be  far  too  much  in  all  the 
great  centres  of  our  own  country.  Are  these  but- 
terfly nurses  prepared  to  remember  in  the  future 


46  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

the  profession  they  invaded?  Will  they  respond 
to  the  calls  that  are  made  to  help,  not  young,  at- 
tractive and  valiant  men,  but  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren in  every  phase  of  helplessness  and  hopeless- 
ness? I  do  not  think  so.  There  is  neither  noto- 
riety nor  limelight  in  the  sober,  serious  life  of  the 
hospital  nurse  and  sister.  Above  all  there  is  a  hard 
and  necessary  discipline  that  calls  for  much  moral 
courage  to  render  it  tolerable.  Physical  courage 
is  seldom  lacking  either  in  men  or  women  who  are 
well-bred,  and  it  may  be  freely  granted  that  a  cer- 
tain measure  was  demanded  even  of  the  butterfly 
nurses;  but  there  is  no  redemption  in  this.  To 
savour  the  full  sense  of  life  without  courage  is  im- 
possible. One  might  as  readily  make  an  omelette 
without  breaking  eggs.  In  this  case  it  is  courage 
misdirected,  energy  misspent. 

I  feel  very  strongly  about  this  scandal — so 
strongly  that  I  have  not  hesitated  to  write  what 
is  bound  to  offend  some  of  my  own  friends;  but 
there  are  times  when  it  is  impossible  to  be  silent 
if  one  would  live  on  tolerable  terms  with  one's  self. 
I  feel  that  in  these  days  woman  is  called  upon  to 
make  supreme  sacrifices,  that  what  she  is  giving 
even  now  is  less  than  will  be  required  of  her  later 
on,  that  her  war  record  and  her  record  when  peace 
is  about  to  return  will  be  scanned  closely  and  criti- 
cally by  generations  of  really  free  women  yet  un- 


NURSING  IN  WAR  TIME  47 

born.  To  know  of  a  blot  upon  woman's  war-time 
service  record  and  to  make  no  attempt  to  erase 
it  is  impossible.  The  record  of  the  real  nursing 
sisterhood  is  brilliant  in  the  extreme.  Why  should 
it  be  obscured  for  the  sake  of  a  few  highly  placed 
and  foolish  young  women  who  sought  with  the  min- 
imum of  labour  to  make  the  maximum  of  effect? 
It  is  unjust,  ungenerous,  and  altogether  unworthy 
of  the  representatives  of  families  that  in  many 
cases  have  earned  their  ample  honours  legitimately 
enough. 

Great  Britain  owes  more  than  it  can  ever  re- 
pay to  the  nursing  sisterhood;  and  it  is  intolerable 
that  while  their  silent  heroism  passes  with  so  lit- 
tle recognition,  any  girl  of  good  family  who  as- 
sumes a  uniform  she  has  not  won  the  right  to  wear 
should  pose  as  the  representative  of  a  sisterhood 
she  is  not  worthy  to  associate  with,  of  whose  tra- 
dition she  is  ignorant,  of  whose  high  discipline  and 
complete  restraint  she  is  intolerant.  There  are 
three  classes  of  women  in  our  midst.  The  first 
earns  reward  and  claims  it,  the  second  earns  re- 
ward and  does  not  claim  it,  the  last  claims  reward 
and  does  not  earn  it.  Of  these  classes  the  real  nurse 
belongs  to  the  second,  and  the  butterfly  sisterhood 
to  the  third.  At  such  a  season  as  this  there  is 
no  room  in  our  midst  for  the  last,  and  it  would  be 
well  for  us  all  if  authority  could  spare  a  moment 


48  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

from  manifold  activities  firmly  and  ruthlessly  to 
suppress  its  future  activities.  The  hardship  in- 
volved would  be  of  the  slightest  and  the  benefit  seri- 
ous and  lasting. 


VI 

TWO  YEAES  OF  WAR — WOMAN's  LOSS  AND  GAIN 

The  long-drawn-out  agony  of  strife  is  now  two 
years  old  and,  as  each  day  adds  its  tale  of  slaughter 
to  the  incalculable  total,  we  women  may  pause  in 
our  war  work  for  a  moment  and  endeavour  to  es- 
timate our  own  position.  We  are  no  longer  as  we 
were,  "like  Niobe,  all  tears."  Niobe,  if  I  remem- 
ber rightly,  taunted  the  gods,  and  for  this  offence 
all  her  children  were  taken  from  her.  We  women 
did  nothing  to  cause  our  own  misfortune;  on  the 
contrary,  we  strove  in  our  little  way  to  promote 
peace,  and  to  that  end,  above  many  others,  we 
sought  a  hearing  in  the  councils  of  the  nations. 

But  it  was  not  to  be.  Our  claims  were  ridiculed 
or  ignored,  and  now  man-made  war  has  swept  over 
Europe  like  a  blight,  and  we  are  left  to  aid  our 
country  through  the  day  and  to  mourn,  when  the 
long  day's  work  is  done,  for  our  fathers  and 
brothers,  our  husbands  and  sons.  Yet  perhaps  the 
worst  is  not  with  those  who  mourn.  The  Immor- 
tals can  sport  with  them  no  longer.  When  the 
last  of  Niobe's  twelve  children  had  passed,  the  lim- 

49 


50  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

its  of  Latona's  vengeance  were  reached.  To  have 
killed  the  mother  too  had  been  a  kindness. 

The  woman  whose  son  or  husband  has  been 
snatched  from  her  knows  the  fullness  of  sorrow, 
but  anxiety  for  their  fate  must  pass  her  by,  while 
those  of  us  whose  loved  ones  are  on  the  battlefield 
would  hardly  hope  for  a  moment's  peace  of  mind 
if  it  were  not  for  the  duties  that  engage  our  work- 
ing hours  and  sometimes  earn  dreamless  sleep.  In 
a  wonderful  procession  that  tramped  through 
muddy  London  under  the  rain  a  year  ago  I  saw  a 
great  petition  by  women  for  the  means  not  only  to 
serve,  but  to  forget. 

After  all,  this  claim  to  national  service  is  no  more 
than  was  advanced  in  the  old  days  when  access  to 
the  heads  of  the  Government  was  barred  and  the 
hooligans  of  a  great  city  were  allowed  to  give  full 
rein  to  their  impulses.  Then  our  rulers  thought 
they  could  dispense  with  women,  to-day  we  are  rec- 
ognised as  indispensable.  That  is  all,  but  it  is  very 
much,  and  it  sets  me  the  question  that  is  the  title 
of  this  brief  paper — What  has  woman  lost  and 
what  has  woman  gained  ? 

She  has  lost  much  that  was  dearest  to  her,  much 
that  life  is  powerless  to  replace.  All  the  springs 
of  her  being  have  nourished  the  love  that  she  has 
given  to  her  dear  ones,  to  the  man  who  was  her 
choice,  to  the  son  who  fed  upon  her  life.    In  many 


TWO  YEARS  OF  WAR  61 

cases  she  has  lived  almost  entirely  in  her  chil- 
dren, for  the  ties  that  bind  her  to  the  active  pleas- 
ures of  life  grow  weak  in  conflict  with  the  powers 
of  maternity.  She  has  forgotten  the  brief  years 
in  which  she  lived  for  herself  and  savoured  all  the 
sweets  of  existence,  she  has  lived  in  her  children, 
happy  chiefly  in  their  happiness,  ambitious  only 
for  their  future  and  concerned  with  the  struggle 
for  the  freedom  of  her  sex  less  on  account  of  her 
own  generation  than  on  account  of  that  which  is 
to  follow.  It  is  woman's  role  to  give,  it  is  man's 
role  to  take,  and  custom  has  staled  for  him  the  in- 
finite variety  of  his  taking.  And  now  he  has  taken 
so  much  that  made  life  worth  living  that  she  seeks 
an  anodyne  for  her  grief  in  giving  him  all  that  is 
left  to  give,  the  labour  of  her  hands. 

This  is  not  only  true  of  the  women  of  England, 
it  applies  equally  to  the  women  of  every  belligerent 
country,  friend  and  foe  alike,  and  it  may  be  said 
that  between  the  women  of  the  world  there  is  a 
common  sacrifice  and  a  common  sympathy.  All 
have  suffered,  all  must  continue  to  sufi'er,  on  a 
scale  that  this  old  world  of  ours,  with  all  its  crimes 
and  tragedies  beyond  number  and  beyond  belief, 
cannot  parallel.  It  is  this  truth  that  steadies  our 
nerves  and  strengthens  our  hearts  and  sets  us  look- 
ing, past  the  ultimate  sacrifice,  to  what  may  lie  be- 
yond, not  for  ourselves  but  for  others. 


52  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

All  that  we  have  has  been  taken  or  is  being  de- 
manded of  us.  Is  there  in  all  the  world  something 
to  which  we  may  look  forward  with  confidence, 
something  that  may  justify  hope?  I  think  there 
is.  Without  any  sense  of  pride  we  may  claim  that 
woman  has  at  least  vindicated  the  claims  she  ad- 
vanced in  those  peaceful  days  that  seemingly  lie  so 
far  behind  us.  She  claimed  that  she  was  worthy  to 
play  her  part  in  the  conduct  of  national  life,  that 
she  was  in  very  truth  indispensable  to  it;  she  was 
told,  by  brutal  word  or  brutal  deed,  that  her  am- 
bitions outran  her  capacities.  One  year  of  war  has 
given  the  lie  to  this  assertion.  Woman,  even  be- 
fore the  coming  of  Compulsion,  encouraged  her 
dearest  to  go,  if  needs  be,  to  their  death,  in  a  war 
for  which  she  has  no  shadow  of  responsibility  be- 
fore God  or  man.  Conventions,  agreements,  trea- 
ties, alliances,  in  all  these  things  she  has  no  share, 
but  as  soon  as  they  materialise  in  war  she  must  pay 
the  heaviest  price. 

The  excitement  and  glory  of  a  struggle  in  which 
the  fighter  feels  that  he  has  surrendered  his  life 
to  high  causes  is  not  for  her,  she  must  be  content 
with  the  pale  reflex  or  with  the  tragedy.  In  her 
heart  she  may  know  that  man  incurs  the  penalties 
of  his  ambitions  or  bad  diplomacy  or  unprepared- 
ness  for  upheaval ;  but  those  penalties  press  heavier 
on  women  than  on  men,  for,  even  granting  that  the 


TWO  YEARS  OF  WAR  53 

love  of  husband  for  wife  and  wife  for  husband  be 
equal,  j'^et  the  passion  of  a  mother  for  her  child  and 
her  grief  when  he  is  snatched  from  life  in  the  hours 
when  life  is  unfolding  all  its  possibilities,  is  some- 
thing beyond  the  strength  of  man  to  grasp. 

But  woman  has  not  failed  on  account  of  her 
griefs,  she  has  strangled  them — or  she  has  tried  to 
with  all  the  strength  that  has  been  given  to  her — 
and  she  has  gone  out  into  the  market-place  and  said, 
"What  more  do  you  require  of  me?  Ask  and  I 
will  give,  direct  and  I  will  obey."  Hers  has  been 
the  supreme  sacrifice,  and  now  at  the  moment  when 
all  that  seemed  worth  striving  for  had  passed,  she 
sees  suddenly  a  fresh  horizon,  the  Pisgah  view  of 
the  Promised  Land. 

She  realises  that  man  is  at  last  beginning  to 
understand  and  even  to  acknowledge  her  place  in 
the  world,  that  tlie  future  cannot  repeat  the  errors 
of  the  past,  that  the  day-dawn  of  her  emancipa- 
tion is  visible.  This  war,  reconciling  so  many  dif- 
ferences, rebuking  so  much  pride  and  bringing  so 
many  men  and  women  face  to  face  for  the  first 
time  in  their  life  with  life's  actualities,  has  united 
all  workers,  irrespective  of  class  or  sex.  It  is  seen 
now  that  woman  has  a  part  to  play  in  the  con- 
duct of  the  State,  and  that  there  are  spheres  of  ac- 
tivity in  which  women  might  and  must  work  for 
the  common  good.     She  and  man  together  must 


54  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

build  up  a  new  civilisation  out  of  the  wrecks  of 
the  old  one,  not  only  here  but  throughout  the  strife- 
stricken  world.  Old  barriers,  time-worn  preju- 
dices, a  blind  conservatism — what  part  have  these 
in  the  mental  attitude  of  nations  freed  from  over- 
whelming peril? 

The  soul  of  my  sex  would  be  as  desolate  to-day 
as  the  ruined  cities  of  Belgium,  Poland,  and  Servia, 
were  it  not  for  the  certain  knowledge  that  our 
sacrifice  has  not  been  made  in  vain.  We  have  the 
right  to  hope  that  our  share  in  the  work  of  the  world 
is  to  be  acknowledged  at  last,  and  that  the  spheres 
of  our  activity  are  to  be  widened.  In  this  way,  and 
only  thus,  we  shall  be  able,  in  years  that  have  yet 
to  be,  to  influence  thought  and  to  influence  action, 
to  bring  a  humanizing  note  into  the  great  chord  of 
life.  We  shall  strive  through  the  sisterhood  of 
women  towards  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  we 
shall  be  working  among  those  who  will  be  able  to 
see  for  themselves  what  one-sided  rule  and  one- 
sided domination  have  done  for  progress  and  civili- 
sation after  their  slow  ascent  to  a  position  that  at 
best  left  so  much  to  be  desired. 

The  women  of  my  generation  will  sow  where 
they  may  not  hope  to  reap,  but  there  is  nothing 
new  for  woman  in  this  experience.  It  is  her  mis- 
sion in  this  world  to  sacrifice  herself,  from  the  hour 
when  she  accepts  motherhood  until  the  end.     Her 


TWO  YEARS  OF  WAR  55 

happiness  is  derived  from  the  contemplation  of  the 
happiness  of  others,  she  lives  in  the  new  lives  with 
which  she  renews  the  world.  She  will  leave  con- 
tentedly to  others  the  prizes  for  which  she  laboured 
in  years  of  peace  and  suffered  through  the  season 
of  war.  It  will  be  sufficient  for  her  dimly  to  fore- 
see the  time  when  those  who  have  replaced  her  will 
give  birth  to  sons  with  no  more  pangs  than  Nature 
demands,  and  give  birth  to  daughters  in  the  belief 
that  they  will  not  be  widowed  or  fatherless  or  child- 
less through  catastrophes  of  man's  own  making. 

So  it  seems  to  me,  looking  back  at  the  cruel 
record  of  two  years,  that  woman,  for  all  her  losses, 
has  gained,  that  what  she  has  lost  is  matter  for 
her  private  sorrow,  and  what  she  has  gained  is  mat- 
ter for  universal  joy.  She  has  found  the  uses  of 
adversity,  she  has  accepted  self-sacrifice  for  the  sake 
of  those  who  will  be  the  better  able  to  enjoy  the 
rich  fruits  of  life.  In  this  knowledge  she  will  la- 
bour, for  the  sake  of  this  truth  she  will  persevere 
with  a  confidence  in  the  future  that  no  shifting  tides 
of  chance  can  shake.  And  her  watchword  in  the 
coming  year  is,  Hope. 


VII 

CHILD   LABOUR   ON    THE   LAND 

It  is  a  commonplace  that  war  brings  in  its  train 
evils  without  number,  but  there  are  certain  ills  that 
are  added  to  the  inevitable  ones  either  by  greed  of 
gain,  indifference  to  progress  or  a  determination  to 
make  profit  at  the  expense  of  the  State.  We  have 
in  our  midst  at  all  times  certain  people  who  are 
concerned  only  with  their  own  ends,  and  who  re- 
gard all  the  means  to  those  ends  as  legitimate.  War 
time  reduces  the  measure  of  restraint  that  the  com- 
mon sense  of  the  community'  imposes  upon  its 
greedier  members.  They  find  and  seize  their  hour 
when  normal  conditions  are  upset.  It  would  be 
easy  to  multiply  instances,  but  in  writing  this  paper 
I  am  concerned  with  one  only — the  employment  of 
children  on  farms. 

To  the  average  man  who  does  not  know  a  swede 
from  a  turnip  or  the  difference  between  sainfoin 
and  clover  this  is  a  small  matter;  to  those  of  us 
who  know  the  land  and  its  problems,  who  adminis- 
ter estates  large  or  small,  who  are  morally  if  not 
legally  responsible  for  the  happiness  and  well-being 

of  village  communities,  it  is  a  tragedy. 

56 


CHILD  LABOUR  ON  THE  LAND  57 

I  can  remember  hearing  my  elders  talk  of  the 
bad  old  days  when  the  gang  system  prevailed  all 
over  England.  The  ganger  was  a  contractor  of 
irregular  labom*.  lie  would  enter  a  district  in 
charge  of  his  wretched  company  of  men,  women, 
and  children,  and  would  supply  their  labour  at  fixed 
rates  to  the  farmer  who  needed  it.  lie  charged  so 
much  a  day  for  each  hand;  he  saw  to  it  that  one 
and  all  did  their  full  day's  work.  They  were  fed 
abominably,  housed  in  barns  and  out-houses,  and 
lived  in  a  promiscuity  that  would  revolt  a  gipsy. 
At  last  even  the  thick-skinned  countiyside  could 
endure  the  abomination  no  longer,  and  the  "gang- 
er" disappeared.  It  took  years  for  the  Legisla- 
ture to  discover  that,  apart  from  the  cruelty  in- 
volved in  the  custom,  it  was  creating  fresh  material 
for  gaols  and  asylums,  that  children  needed  edu- 
cation rather  than  field  labour,  that  the  mothers 
could  not  combine  maternity  with  hard  work  in  the 
fields,  that  if  you  deprive  people  of  the  means  of 
living  decently  they  will  revert  to  the  state  of  sav- 
agery. 

The  agricultural  labourer's  struggle  has  not  been 
limited  to  the  land.  He  has  been  fighting  for 
years  to  raise  his  miserable  wage.  When  I  was  a 
girl  it  was  about  a  shilling  a  day  with  "small  beer" 
of  the  farmer's  brewing  thrown  in.  It  is  about  Ss. 
Qd.  a  day  now ;  but  against  this  the  price  of  necessi- 


68  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

ties  has  gone  up  between  50  and  100  per  cent.  Sav- 
ing is  impossible,  and  even  the  old  age  pension  that 
lightens  the  evening  of  his  long  day  hardly  avails 
to  keep  him  from  the  workhouse — unless  he  has  a 
wife  of  equal  age  or  children  who,  out  of  their 
tiny  means,  will  render  a  little  assistance.  He 
lives  in  a  cottage  that,  if  often  picturesque,  is  nearly 
always  overcrowded;  his  food  and  clothing  are  of 
the  roughest,  and  for  holidays  he  has  Christmas 
Day  and  the  wet  weather,  when  he  may  sit  at  home 
— at  his  own  expense — for  when  there  is  no  work 
there  is  no  pay.  But  he  lives  in  hope;  and  some- 
times he  goes  on  strike,  to  the  disgust  and  indig- 
nation of  his  employer,  and  his  children  have  been 
getting  a  better  chance  in  life  than  he  had.  They 
are  supposed  to  be  kept  at  school  until  they  are 
fourteen.  He  was  rook  scaring  at  the  ripe  age  of 
ten  for  a  penny  a  day. 

Rural  education  is  a  poor  thing  enough.  Chil- 
dren may  have  to  walk  two  miles  or  more,  in  all 
weathers,  to  the  village  school.  Their  father  can- 
not afford  to  buy  them  good  boots  or  a  water-proof 
coat;  it  is  beyond  his  means  to  give  them  nourish- 
ing food,  and  so  help  them  to  fight  the  diseases  of 
childhood ;  but  he  feels  that  something  is  being  done 
for  them,  and,  as  a  rule,  he  does  nothing  to  make 
them  wage-earners  before  their  time.  Now  they 
are  taken  from  school  two  years  before  an  age 


CHILD  LABOUR  ON  THE  LAND  59 

that  the  trade  unions  hold  to  be  insufficient;  they 
are  sent  on  the  land  to  work  for  a  wage  of  eighteen 
pence  a  day,  in  any  weather,  on  any  soil,  without 
the  proper  clothing  and  with  insufficient  food. 
There  they  will  undersell  the  rural  labour  market, 
they  will  be  robbed  of  their  childhood,  they  will  go 
without  supen-ision  at  a  time  when  they  need  it 
most.  And  the  Bumbles  of  our  Education  Coun- 
cils have  nodded  thick,  approving  heads. 

It  is  hard  to  write  patiently  of  such  retrograde 
devices,  put  forward,  as  all  such  proposals  are,  in 
the  name  of  the  country's  needs.  If  these  needs 
be  genuine,  which  I  doubt,  if  there  be  no  adequate 
supply  of  female  labour  to  be  obtained  for  a  fair 
price,  why  should  the  children  of  our  poorest,  the 
little  ones  whose  physique  has  never  been  strength- 
ened by  sufficient  nourishing  food  and  by  the 
hygiene  of  the  home,  be  called  upon  to  bear  the 
burden  single-handed?  Why  should  not  Eton  and 
Harrow,  Rugby,  JNIarlborough,  Winchester,  and 
other  schools  without  number,  serve  the  national 
need?  The  lads  at  these  expensive  establishments 
can  at  least  complete  their  education  after  the 
war,  they  can  carry  health  and  strength  to  the  fields, 
they  can  acquaint  themselves  at  first  hand  with 
the  realities  of  labour,  a  knowledge  that,  with  the 
changing  times  ahead,  will  be  valuable  to  many  of 
them  who  will  inherit  land  in  days  to  come.    Will 


60  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

the  farmers  who  are  sending  to  the  fields  the  half- 
grown  children  of  their  ill-paid  labourers  contribute 
their  own  to  work  by  their  side?  I  am  sure  that 
the  mere  suggestion  will  rouse  the  wildest  indig- 
nation; but  all  the  children,  whatever  their  advan- 
tage or  disadvantage,  are  British  citizens,  and  it  is 
not  too  much  to  suggest  that  those  who  have  a  stake 
in  the  country  should  at  least  do  as  much  as  those 
for  whom  fortune  provided  no  birthright.  Let  us 
be  democratic  in  deeds  as  well  as  words.  I  am 
quite  sure  that,  if  the  doubtful  privilege  extended 
to  the  rural  labourer's  children  were  conferred  at 
the  same  time  upon  the  children  of  all  patriots,  the 
councils  would  expunge  their  fatuous  resolutions 
from  their  minute  books ;  they  would  make  all  pos- 
sible haste  to  forget  them. 

But  it  may  be  urged  that,  in  pleading  for  the 
children,  I  have  overlooked  the  crying  needs  of 
the  countryside,  that  I  am  ignorant  of  the  real  need 
for  labour  to  deal  with  the  increased  area  of  the 
corn  and  for  the  late-sown  spring  crops,  for  it  is 
clear  that,  as  soon  as  the  proposal  for  universal 
child  labour  is  made,  the  scheme  falls  to  the  ground. 

I  am  well  aware  of  the  existing  conditions — 
what  landlord  is  not? — and  I  have  a  remedy  for 
them.  It  is  not  a  popular  one,  but  I  am  not  search- 
ing for  popularity.  In  spite  of  the  genuine  sacri- 
fices that  have  been  made  by  many  classes  of  the 


CHILD  LABOUR  ON  THE  LAND  61 

community,  much  more  remains  to  be  done.  We 
have  all  over  the  country  racing  stables  full  of 
lads  who  cannot  go  to  the  war  and  of  men  who 
have  passed  serviceable  age.  Hard  work  in  the 
fields  from  April  to  the  time  the  last  corn  is  under 
the  stack  thatch  would  do  them  all  the  good  in  the 
world,  and,  with  some  knowledge  of  all  classes  of 
horses,  I  believe  that  horses  would  survive  and  the 
superiority  of  the  British  sires  would  not  be  lost. 

Having  depleted  the  racing  stables,  even  at  the 
cost  of  reducing  the  number  of  race  meetings,  I 
would  turn  my  attention  to  the  golf  clubs:  their 
name  is  legion.  What  an  army  of  'ineligible"  cad- 
dies might  be  recruited  for  the  fields  and  given  the 
chance  of  earning  a  living  intelligently!  I  go  so 
far  as  to  hint  that  thousands  of  the  elderly  gen- 
tlemen who  still  pursue  the  golf  ball  might  find 
more  useful  occupation  in  ministering  to  the  coun- 
try's genuine  needs. 

Let  me  pass  from  one  monstrous  suggestion  to 
another.  I  would  enroll  the  gamekeepers  and  the 
gillies;  for  once  I  would  leave  the  wild  pheasants 
to  breed  as  they  will  and  the  grouse  to  work  out 
their  own  salvation.  A  desperate  remedy,  but  then 
our  disease  is  dangerous.  We  need  corn  even  more 
than  pheasants,  and  other  game  birds  can  look  after 
themselves.  There  might  be  an  epidemic  of  poach- 
ing, in  which  case  I  would  sentence  every  poacher 


62  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

to  three  months'  hard  labour — on  the  land.  We 
have  in  this  country  to-day  hundreds,  I  might  say 
thousands,  of  sturdy  middle-aged  men  who  are  now 
following  occupations  that,  while  they  are  perfectly 
reasonable  in  times  of  peace,  are  superfluous,  even 
derogatory,  to-day. 

There  is  yet  another  class  that  can  be  mobilised 
to  serve  the  country's  need.  I  would  like  to  see 
the  last  remaining  footmen  and  the  valets  of  mid- 
dle age  allowed  to  enjoy  a  summer  of  useful  ac- 
tivity. They,  too,  may  be  in  their  right  place  at 
normal  times;  now  their  country  needs  them  more 
than  their  masters  do.  A  little  hardship  would  be 
involved,  but  I  do  not  believe  there  are  many  em- 
ployers of  superfluous  or  ornamental  labour  who 
would,  if  the  matter  were  put  before  them  fairly 
and  temperately,  place  their  own  petty  comforts 
before  the  country's  need  for  food.  We  hope  and 
believe  that  we  may  rely  upon  our  Fleet  to  feed 
us,  but  why  should  we  run  risks?  No  war  is  won 
until  it  is  lost,  and  if  by  ill-fortune  we  experienced 
a  shortage,  I  do  not  think  that  the  owners  of  racing 
stables,  the  renters  of  shooting  and  fishing,  the 
members  of  golf  clubs  and  the  employers  of  men 
servants  could  acquit  themselves  of  a  serious  re- 
sponsibility. If  all  these  sources  of  supply  are 
tapped,  and  it  is  still  found  that  the  supply  of  la- 
bour in  the  fields  is  inadequate  to  the  nation's  needs, 


CHILD  LABOUR  ON  THE  LAND  63 

let  us  proclaim  a  national  holiday  in  all  the  schools 
of  the  country,  and  let  the  high  and  the  low  born, 
the  rich  and  the  poor,  seek  the  fields  together. 
But  until  all  sources  of  adult  labour  have  been  ex- 
hausted let  us  spare  the  little  ones,  and  in  any  case 
let  us  see  that  those  whose  share  of  the  good  things 
of  life  is  smallest  are  not  called  upon  to  endure 
trials  and  make  sacrifices  that  we  would  shrink  from 
demanding  of  our  own  children. 


VIII 

COMRADES 

In  times  when  national  emotion  is  deeply  stirred  it 
is  possible  for  the  close  observer  to  get  a  glimpse 
of  the  main  trend  of  thought.  Just  as  a  feather 
will  show  the  direction  of  the  wind,  a  word  may 
show  the  direction  of  a  man's  mind.  It  is  on  this 
account  that  I  was  deeply  moved  and  greatly  stim- 
ulated of  late  by  hearing  that  as  the  gallant  French- 
men attack  the  enemy  their  rallying  cry  is  "Cama- 
rades,  Camarades!"  This  is  one  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful words  in  any  language,  it  is  the  one  by  which 
a  nation  may  rise  to  the  height  of  its  greatest 
achievement,  whether  in  clearing  its  beloved  land  of 
a  hated  enemy  or  clearing  its  administration  of 
the  abuses  from  which  no  administration  is  free. 
One  hardly  dares  to  think  of  what  the  world  might 
be  like  to-day  if  war  had  not  been  needed  to  estab- 
lish the  wonderful  unity  the  word  bespeaks. 

There  is  not  on  all  the  earth  a  more  democratic 
army  than  that  of  France,  and  to-day  it  is  a  perfect 
union,  a  veritable  brotherhood.  From  the  highest 
General  to  the  humblest  "piou-piou"  there  is  but 

64 


COMRADES  65 

one  aim,  one  ideal,  prince  and  peasant  pursue  it  to 
the  end.  One  and  all  know  that  if  success  is  to  be 
achieved  against  heavy  odds,  it  is  by  the  help  of 
the  real  brotherhood,  the  feeling  that  the  accidents 
of  birth  and  fortune  do  not  count  any  longer,  that 
"a  man's  a  man  for  a'  that."  Other  countries  have 
caught  a  glimpse  of  the  truth,  our  own  among  the 
number,  but  it  needed  French  clarity  of  vision  to 
recognise  the  truth  and  crystallise  it  in  a  word — a 
simple  word  with  the  mystic  number  of  letters  and 
so  powerful  that,  when  it  becomes  the  rallying  cry 
in  times  of  peace  for  all  civilised  nations,  the  evils 
under  which  men  and  women  labour  will  be  swept 
away  like  chaff  before  wind. 

For  many  years  past  I  have  been  convinced  that 
the  enemies  of  mankind  are  not  men.  Ignorance, 
poverty,  greed,  vice,  disease,  these  are  the  foes  that 
prey  upon  all  communities,  and  while  those  who 
foster  them  are  of  no  brotherhood,  those  who  would 
combat  them  need  no  more  than  brotherhood  in  or- 
der to  overcome.  War,  in  which  a  man  makes  the 
supreme  surrender,  in  which  he  discounts  the  terror 
of  death  and  makes  purposes  splendid  by  his  de- 
votion, reveals  the  truth  even  to  those  who  have 
never  thought  before.  Will  brotherhood  survive 
war,  or  does  it  need  the  exaltation  born  of  the  great- 
est of  world  tragedies  to  open  a  nation's  eyes — and 
keep  them  open? 


66  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

The  history  of  our  civilisation  depends  upon  the 
answer  to  this  question.  Nothing  less  than  brother- 
hood will  enable  the  nation  to  face  the  widespread 
poverty  that  already  exists,  but  will  not  be  recog- 
nised until  peace  is  restored.  There  will  be  very 
little  money  left  in  the  countries  of  combatant  na- 
tions, and  there  will  be  very  many  needs.  The  care 
of  the  wounded,  the  maimed  and  the  helpless,  pro- 
vision for  the  widows  and  the  children  of  war  will 
come  first.  Then  there  are  the  schools;  nothing  is 
more  vital  to  the  future  generation  than  education, 
and  few  great  claims  are  more  in  danger  of  a  grudg- 
ing treatment. 

There  are  two  ways  of  handling  a  nation's  af- 
fairs, one  is  to  make  the  rich  richer  at  the  expense 
of  the  poor,  the  other  is  to  make  the  poor  less  poor 
at  the  expense  of  the  rich.  The  peaceful  solution 
of  the  whole  problem  is  found  in  the  battle  call  of 
our  gallant  Allies.  If  we  are  "camarades,  bons 
camarades !"  we  can  endure  our  national  privations 
and  scarcely  feel  them,  for  we  shall  all  be  in  the 
same  boat,  and  it  is  not  poverty  that  galls  but  the 
contrast  between  poverty  and  wealth.  Down  to 
the  time  when  war  began  this  contrast  was  ever 
present,  it  was  becoming  one  of  the  great  dangers 
of  our  time;  it  has  not  disappeared  to-day,  but  it 
is  far  less  noticeable,  and  as  we  continue  to  spend 
between  thirty  and  forty  million  pounds  a  week  on 


COMRADES  67 

war,  the  cases  of  contrast  will  tend  to  grow  less  and 
less.  I  look  for  the  time  when  men  and  women  will 
find  it  as  distressing  to  flaunt  riches  as  the  poor  find 
it  to  display  the  outward  and  indisputahle  signs  of 
poverty.  One  does  not  envy  even  now  the  state  of 
mind  that  enahles  a  man  to  say  that  he  is  "doing 
very  well  out  of  this  war." 

Among  "comrades"  such  a  thing  would  be  im- 
possible, the  only  excuse  for  making  money  out  of 
national  misfortune  is  to  be  found  in  its  wise  distri- 
bution to  alleviate  the  suffering  that  war  renders 
inevitable.  To  amass  wealth  from  the  country's 
needs,  to  spend  it  on  purely  personal  ends,  to  allow 
an  orgie  more  terrible  than  the  Black  Death  to  fill 
private  coffers,  this  surely  is  the  negation  of  broth- 
erhood, and  those  who  do  it  are  the  outcasts  of  civil- 
isation, even  though  they  purchase  palaces  and  peer- 
ages and  every  honour  that  unscrupulous  Govern- 
ments vend  in  semi-privacy.  How  will  the  men 
who  have  thrown  their  lives  into  the  scale  tolerate 
the  men  who  trafficked  in  the  necessities  of  life,  or 
the  implements  of  death,  and  demand  the  high 
places  as  a  reward  for  successful  huckstering?  They 
will  not  lightly  reckon  them  in  the  ranks  of  the 
"comrades";  in  a  world  founded  on  brotherhood 
there  will  be  no  place  for  them.  If  there  be  a  place 
in  the  near  future  perhaps  it  will  be  the  nearest 
lamp-post.     Stranger  things  have  happened. 


68  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

Sometimes  I  think  we  could  afford  to  lose  this 
war,  or,  at  least,  not  to  win  it,  if  the  Frenchman's 
battle  call  could  become  the  rallying  cry  of  all  par- 
ties and  all  grades  in  this  country.  Much  as  I 
loathe  war  and  all  it  stands  for,  I  feel  that  an  in- 
stant victory  would  have  been  very  bad  for  us,  while 
a  success  won  by  waiting  must  at  least  purge  our 
national  life  of  the  grosser  elements.  The  mingling 
of  high  and  low,  of  rich  and  poor,  the  price  of  strife 
demanded  of  each  and  all,  the  community  wrought 
by  suffering  and  by  heavy  loss,  all  these  things  are 
salutary  for  a  nation  grown  plethoric  by  prosperity. 
It  will  not  greatly  matter  if  we  lose  half  the  world 
and  gain  our  own  souls,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
an  England  wide-eyed,  clean-limbed,  and  efficient 
could  yet  achieve  and  retrieve,  while  an  England 
besotted  by  sloth  and  bemused  by  riches  can  only 
endure  until  the  advent  of  a  stronger  and  more  de- 
termined race. 

Whatever  our  destiny,  whatever  the  future  holds 
in  store,  we  shall  be  happy  indeed  if  we  can  face 
difficulties,  dangers,  privation,  or  supreme  victory 
with  the  cry  of  "Comrades!"  When  war  came,  this 
country  was  fast  sinking  towards  civil  strife,  drift- 
ing for  lack  of  the  spirit  of  good  fellowship.  A  few 
masters,  innumerable  men,  industry  organised  into 
limited  liability  companies  that  the  human  touch, 
the  community  between  employer  and  employed, 


COMRADES  69 

might  cease,  the  wealth  of  the  country  divided  on 
lines  that  gave  90  per  cent,  to  a  tenth  of  the  popu- 
lation and  divided  the  remaining  one-tenth  of  the 
wealth  between  90  per  cent,  of  the  people  who  cre- 
ate it, — these  conditions  were  making  for  a  social 
upheaval  of  bloodiest  kind.  Education  starved,  an 
infant  mortality  greater  than  the  present  waste  of 
war,  discontent,  ill-feeling,  class  hatred,  all  these 
things  were,  all  these  things  may  be  again,  but  not 
if  the  cry  of  "Comrades!"  is  taken  up. 

Whether  we  win  or  lose,  I  see  civil  unrest  in- 
evitable, for  this  war  has  sounded  the  death-knell 
of  the  old  industrial,  social,  and  political  conditions. 
Nothing  within  the  range  of  possibility  can  leave 
us  just  where  we  are,  and  worse  than  the  struggle 
with  an  enemy  is  the  struggle  with  a  friend. 
Though  I  hold  all  war  to  be  fratricidal,  yet  civil 
war  must  ever  remain  the  worst  form  of  it.  As 
soon  as  the  old  problems  force  their  way  again  to 
the  fore  the  danger  of  civil  strife  becomes  immi- 
nent, and  let  us  remember  that  the  working  classes 
that  come  back  from  war  will  have  forgotten  what 
fear  means.  It  seems  to  me  that  salvation  lies  in 
the  Frenchman's  fighting  cry,  that  in  giving  his 
brothers  a  lead  he  has  offered  a  lead  to  civilisa- 
tion. He  has  shown  us  how  to  make  the  inevitable 
changes  peacefully. 

Idealism  is  out  of  fashion  to-day  because — let  us 


70  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

not  burke  the  truth— our  ideahsts  were  deceived 
about  Germany's  intentions,  and  those  in  high 
places  unconsciously  misled  the  people.  Yet  let 
us  cling  to  our  ideals,  for  they  may  prove  our  best 
possession,  and  let  us  realise  that  the  cry  of  "Com- 
rades!" may,  as  years  pass  and  the  old  bitterness 
dies  away,  extend  across  frontiers  and  bind  in  a 
common  brotherhood  the  sons  of  the  men  who 
sought  to  destroy  one  another.  Such  is  the  po- 
tency of  a  word  that  revivifies  life,  laughs  at 
wounds  and  disarms  death.  It  sums  up  the  aspira- 
tions of  the  greatest  reformers  and  social  workers 
of  old  time,  of  the  men,  from  John  Ball  to  William 
Morris,  who  strove  for  England.  Only  the  French 
people,  with  their  innate  sense  of  selection,  could 
have  picked  upon  a  word  that  can  sum  up  the  best 
of  the  ideals  of  the  human  race.  We  are  their  debt- 
ors for  it,  and  there  is  no  nobler  way  of  paying  the 
debt  than  by  developing  the  cry  until  it  resounds 
from  one  end  to  the  other  of  our  Empire.  It  will 
renew  our  youth,  it  will  destroy  many  of  the  old 
evils  that  were  even  worse  than  war,  it  will  realise 
the  ambitions  of  men  who  lived  and  died  for  Eng- 
land in  times  of  peace,  when  there  is  no  reward  for 
social  heroism  other  than  the  consciousness  of  a 
supreme  effort  made  on  behalf  of  people  one  may 
never  see,  people  who  will  never  understand. 
If  the  future  of  the  world  is  with  sane,  wide- 


COMRADES  71 

eyed  democracies;  if  man  is  to  be  free  to  do  the 
world's  work  and  develop  human  destiny  without 
turning  aside  at  the  bidding  of  kings  and  rulers ;  if 
humanity,  with  its  common  lot  and  destiny,  is  to 
develop  the  spirit  of  brotherhood  that  makes  life 
beautiful, — we  could  have  no  finer  rallying  cry  than 
France  has  offered.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  coun- 
try capable  of  originating  and  responding  to  it  can 
be  beaten  by  sheer  weight  of  numbers;  I  feel  that 
it  is  one  of  the  world's  assets,  and  that  somewhere 
in  the  background  the  Great  Force  we  strive  to 
comprehend,  and,  comprehending,  to  worship,  will 
guard  it  against  ultimate  defeat.  To  doubt  this 
were  to  believe  that  the  race  is  to  the  swift  and  the 
battle  to  the  strong,  and  that  the  man  who  can  in- 
vent the  most  efficient  machinery  can  dominate 
God's  world.  Such  a  belief  is  to  me  the  most  un- 
pardonable form  of  atheism.  This  world  was  not 
made,  was  not  populated,  was  not  instructed,  that 
soulless  machinery  might  hold  it  in  thrall  at  last. 
The  French  know  this,  hence  the  battle  cry  that 
thrills  me  as  I  write. 


IX 

THE   CURSE   OF   AUTOCRACY 

In  the  great  gale  that  sweeps  over  Europe  the 
few  rags  that  hide  the  nakedness  of  monarchy  flut- 
ter like  scarecrows ;  I  find  myself  watching  for  the 
gust  that  will  reveal  to  the  gaze  of  the  least  discern- 
ing what  a  dangerous  and  ridiculous  thing  the  bare 
bones  of  kingship  have  become. 

England  has  filed  the  teeth  of  the  serpent,  it  can 
bite  no  more — the  phrase  is  Swinburne's  not  mine. 
We  keep  our  kings  as  we  keep  the  Regalia  in  the 
Tower,  well  housed  and  well  looked  after,  and  be- 
tween the  ruler  and  the  ruled  there  is  a  pleasant, 
but  indefinite  relationship.  Kingship  for  us  is  the 
focus  of  patriotism  and  loyalty,  but  we  should  not 
go  to  war  because  the  house  of  Guelph  were  jealous 
of  the  house  of  Hapsburg,  or  on  bad  terms  with 
the  house  of  Hohenzollern. 

Those  German  pundits  who  believe  that  King 
Edward  made  the  Anglo-German  war  have  never 
grasped  our  national  attitude  toward  monarchy, 
or  King  Edward's  ungrudging  recognition  of  the 
merits  of  the  German  people. 

72 


THE  CURSE  OF  AUTOCRACY  73 

With  us  monarchy  is  an  abstraction,  very  little 
more. 

There  was  a  time  when  it  was  supposed  to  he  the 
fountain  of  honour,  but  politicians  have  fouled 
the  waters  so  much  and  have  bought  and  sold  hon- 
ours so  unblushingly  that  modern  royalty  would 
be  a  little  ashamed  to  father  so  large  an  illegitimate 
progeny.  A  business  nation,  we  have  a  fixed  price 
for  everything.  We  pay  our  kings  so  much  a  year, 
and  if  they  exceeded  their  allowance  the  State 
would  hesitate  to  make  up  the  deficit.  Baronies, 
baronetcies,  knighthoods  and  the  rest  have  their 
fixed  price,  generally,  though  not  invariably,  pay- 
able to  the  party  whips  who  consider  themselves 
morally  bound  to  deliver  the  goods. 

When  we  were  on  the  brink  of  war  in  1914,  M. 
Poincare  wrote  a  touching  letter  to  King  George, 
such  as  an  old-time  king  might  have  sent  to  a 
brother  sovereign.  King  George  signed  a  reply 
that  has  been  published — one  would  wager  that 
nothing  save  the  signature  involved  his  heart  or 
his  pen.  It  was  no  more  than  the  letter  of  a  greatly 
harassed  minister  who  was  trying  to  think  while  he 
balanced  himself  on  a  high  and  unstable  fence. 
Here  was  ample  evidence  that  all  who  run  might 
read  of  the  final  surrender  of  the  monarchy,  and  in- 
cidentally, of  the  desire  of  England  to  maintain 
peace. 


74  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

Nobody  wants  more  than  the  shadow  of  king- 
ship in  this  country.  Everybody  with  more  than 
the  most  perfunctory  knowledge  of  history  has  real- 
ised that  half  the  wars  of  the  world  have  been 
fought  for  the  gratification  of  kings,  and  most  of 
the  others  have  been  waged  in  the  name  of  religion, 
i.e.  to  demonstrate  the  superiority  of  one  orthodoxy 
over  another.  Slowly,  and  at  such  a  sacrifice  as 
the  world  may  well  shudder  to  contemplate,  we  have 
come  within  sight  of  the  end  of  religious  strife. 
There  remain  wars  of  kingship,  the  present  one 
is  little  more  than  that. 

Down  to  a  few  years  ago  the  old  gates  were  still 
standing  at  Temple  Bar  to  divide  the  City  from 
Westminster.  At  Warwick  Castle  the  drawbridge 
is  still  raised  every  night.  In  some  of  the  cities 
of  Southern  Spain  watchmen,  armed  with  spears 
and  oil  lamps,  still  proclaim  the  time  of  night  and 
the  state  of  the  weather.  The  "Miracle"  of  the 
Sacred  Fire  remains  an  annual  spectacle  at  Easter- 
tide in  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  that  is 
in  Jerusalem. 

The  world,  as  though  conscious  of  the  ugliness 
of  so  much  that  is  modern,  still  clings  to  old  cus- 
toms and  institutions  even  when  they  are  absurd. 
That  is  why  autocratic  kingship  survives. 

The  house  of  Hapsburg  has  been  ruling  in  Eu- 
rope since  the  thirteenth  century;  in  Germany  as 


THE  CURSE  OF  AUTOCRACY  75 

well  as  Austria  for  part  of  the  time ;  the  rule  of  the 
Ilohenzollerns  dates  from  1871.  A  German,  Count 
Berthold,  is  said  to  have  originated  in  the  eleventh 
century  the  house  of  Savoy  that  governs  Italy.  In 
Si)ain  we  find  the  ubiquitous  Hapsburgs  and  the 
Bourbons  sharing  rule.  A  Hohenzollern  is  in  Ru- 
mania, and  on  the  distaff  side  in  Greece.  A  Prin- 
cess of  the  Hohenzollern  house  was  the  mother  of 
King  Albert  of  Belgium;  Ferdinand  of  Bulgaria 
has  Coburg  and  Bourbon  blood. 

A  system  of  inter-marriage  has  retained  power 
in  the  hands  of  a  few  houses,  but  nature  is  ill-dis- 
posed toward  inbreeding  and  has  scourged  the  cun- 
ning of  kings  with  insanity  and  disease.  While 
democracy  has  grown  in  stature  and  in  vision,  while 
it  has  been  claiming  its  own  place  in  the  sun,  the 
small  privileged  class  has  diminished  physically, 
mentally,  morally,  but  still  clings  desperately  to 
place.  There  are  a  few  brilliant  exceptions,  Albert 
of  Belgiimi  for  example,  but  Hapsburgs,  Hohen- 
zollerns,  Coburgs,  and  Bourbons  are,  generally 
speaking,  no  longer  qualified  from  any  standpoint 
to  rule  the  destinies  of  free  peoples.  They  are  a 
little  better  than  well-connected  anachronisms,  avid 
of  the  power  that  is  passing  from  them  and  ready 
to  offer  any  sacrifice  that  their  subjects  are  capable 
of  making  in  order  that  their  time-tarnished  pres- 
tige may  shine  again. 


76  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

The  wishes  of  their  people  are  the  last  thing  to 
be  considered  by  autocratic  monarchs.  They  will 
not  stand  in  the  scale  against  the  interests  of  their 
relatives,  and  in  the  courts  of  Europe  it  is  hard 
to  find  a  ruler  who  is  not  a  cousin  of  some  sort 
to  all  his  fellow-sovereigns.  Jealousy,  ambition, 
ill  report,  dyspepsia,  disease,  dementia,  any  one  of 
these  evils  if  it  be  backed  by  greed,  may  avail  to 
plunge  innocent  nations  into  the  hell  of  war.  Forces 
that  sway  a  republic  are  powerless  in  an  absolute 
monarchy  or  in  one  where  servility  and  orthodoxy 
strive  hand  in  hand.  There  are  few  European 
rulers  who  have  half  the  sagacity  of  the  chief  ad- 
visers whom  they  may  override  at  will.  They  are 
not  as  a  rule  men  and  women  of  great  culture,  few 
if  any  have  ideas  that  belong  of  right  to  the  twen- 
tieth century,  their  function  has  outgrown  them, 
and  the  reverence  they  demand  and  receive  is 
founded  very  largely  upon  ignorance  and  super- 
stition. 

To  plunge  Europe  into  war  for  purely  personal 
ends  has  always  seemed  in  the  eyes  of  kings  a  rea- 
sonable action.  Frederick  the  Great  admitted  that 
he  started  the  Seven  Years'  War  by  stealing  Silesia 
from  Austria  for  "glory,"  and  the  records  of  Spain 
and  Austria  are  full  of  similar  crimes. 

Now  that  Europe  has  been  shaken  from  base  to 


THE  CURSE  OF  AUTOCRACY  77 

summit,  will  the  sober  manhood  of  the  twentieth 
century  allow  the  present  system  to  endure? 

On  the  other  hand,  I  see  a  great  movement  to- 
ward giving  kingship  a  fresh  lease  of  life,  toward 
perpetuating  secret  diplomacy  and  developing  cleri- 
calism. But  men  who  have  stood  face  to  face  with 
the  living  God  should  decide  to  worship  henceforth 
after  the  inclination  of  their  own  hearts.  Elderly 
gentlemen  of  conservative  tendencies  are  already 
writing  to  warn  the  public  that,  however  awful  the 
chaos  now  prevailing,  democratic  rule  would  have 
made  it  worse.  I  welcome  such  warnings,  for  they 
are  a  proof  that  the  upholders  of  tradition  are  at 
last  aware  of  the  slippery  places  over  which  they 
must  so  shortly  tread. 

If  the  democracy  can  see  the  truth,  if  its  eyes 
refuse  to  be  dazzled  by  flags,  medals,  and  uniforms 
and  its  ears  will  convey  each  plausible  speech  to 
the  brain  for  sober  analysis,  this  war  will  not  have 
been  waged  in  vain. 

I  hold  in  all  seriousness  that  it  is  a  strife  of  kings. 
Gladstone  once  asked  anybody  to  tell  him  how  the 
Austrian  Empire  had  been  of  any  service  to  hu- 
manity. The  aggregation  of  uncongenial  national- 
ities has  been  kept  together  for  the  greater  glory 
of  the  effete  house  of  Hapsburg,  a  house  whose  time 
history,  even  since  Kaiser  Franz  Josef  came  to  the 
throne,  could  not  be  printed.     The  genius  of  the 


78  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

German  people,  their  magnificent  education,  stern 
discipline,  tireless  industry  and  full  nurseries  were 
conquering  both  hemispheres,  but  that  was  not  suf- 
ficient. Unless  the  German  could  pay  tribute  to 
the  house  of  Hohenzollern  and  increase  the  Im- 
perial prestige,  progress  was  an  egg  without  salt  to 
the  palate  of  the  Potsdam  hierarchy. 

The  fruits  of  forty  years  of  labour  and  a  genera- 
tion of  child-bearing  were  flung  into  the  scale  that 
the  Hohenzollerns  might  stand  more  directly  in  the 
limelight. 

The  people  whose  blood  was  to  be  spilt,  whose 
wives  were  to  be  widowed,  whose  wealth  was  to  be 
squandered,  were  wilfully  deceived  and  were  driven 
to  war  as  the  Pharaohs  drove  their  warrior-slaves. 

Their  awakening  must  come,  and  with  it  let  us 
hope  a  further  accession  of  strength  to  the  Social 
Democracy  that  is  the  best  hope  of  Germany. 

We  know  that  neither  England  nor  France  de- 
sired war,  that  Russia,  whatever  her  interest  in  the 
great  Slav-Teuton  controversy,  was  not  ready  for 
it,  and  the  worst  to  be  said  of  the  Allied  Powers 
is  that,  conscious  of  an  enormous  menace,  they 
united  to  destroy  it.  But  every  thinking  man  knows 
that  without  the  ambitions  of  a  few  soldiers,  states- 
men (so-called),  and  officials  this  war  had  never 
come  about. 

I  have  often  compared  the  position  of  republics 


THE  CURSE  OF  AUTOCRACY  79 

with  that  of  monarchies  and  have  cited  the  Ameri- 
can Republics.  The  United  States  live  in  peace, 
even  tlie  South  American  States,  with  their  mixed 
population,  their  Spanish,  Portuguese,  German 
and  Italian  blood,  are  seldom  found  long  at  strife. 

Royalists  have  spoken  to  me  glibly  about  the  cor- 
ruption that  is  said  to  be  inherent  in  republics.  It 
is  about  the  only  charge  they  can  formulate,  and 
the  reply  is  obvious.  In  republics  corruption  is 
hard  to  hide,  it  comes  to  the  surface  and  is  visible 
to  all.  In  monarchies  corruption,  no  less  rife,  is 
hard  to  expose;  all  the  avenues  to  light  and  free 
speech  are  closed. 

Your  republic  brings  character  and  brains  to  the 
top;  your  monarchy  makes  statesmen  of  courtiers 
and  sycophants,  men  who  will  bow  the  knee  to  the 
Baal  of  the  hour. 

A  republic  is  open  to  the  air  of  heaven.  A  mon- 
archy is  a  garden  enclosed,  richer  in  rank  weeds 
than  flowers.  If  Germany  had  been  a  republic,  the 
Social  Democrats  could  have  learned  the  truth  and 
acted  upon  it ;  had  Austria  been  a  republic,  giving 
equal  voice  to  all  the  interests  it  affects  to  repre- 
sent, sympathy  with  the  Slavs  would  have  kept  the 
rulers  from  their  disastrous  attempt  to  reduce  Ser- 
bia to  the  status  of  a  vassal  kingdom. 

Kings  have  served  their  time.  The  ruler  who 
rode  to  war  at  the  head  of  his  troops,  who  could 


80  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

handle  the  heaviest  sword  or  battle-axe,  who  was 
both  the  ruler  and  judge  of  his  people,  belongs  to 
a  bygone  era.  His  last  raison  d'etre  passed  with 
the  era  of  industry  and  rapid  transit.  He  became 
an  anachronism  when  people  began  to  realise  that 
life  is  a  gift  to  be  wisely  used,  and  that  racial  an- 
tagonisms may  be  cured  or  dispersed  by  close  rela- 
tionship. It  is  for  kings  and  for  kings  alone  that 
millions  of  men  who  have  no  real  quarrel  have 
slaughtered  one  another  under  conditions  of  horror 
that  make  description  inadequate.  Until  we  under- 
stand that  simple  truth  that  the  natural  inclina- 
tion of  civilised  man  is  to  live  on  friendly  terms 
with  his  neighbour  in  spite  of  all  divisions  of  bound- 
aries, whether  of  place,  blood,  or  religion,  civilisa- 
tion will  be  rendered  null.  Kings  have  ceased  to 
represent  their  people ;  the  time  has  come  when  the 
people  can  represent  themselves. 

Unhappily  they  do  not  yet  recognise  their  own 
power,  and  nothing  is  farther  from  the  wishes  of 
Europe's  tottering  dynasties  than  that  they  should 
do  so.  Education,  their  first  aid  to  emancipation, 
has  been  grudgingly  conceded.  Representation  is 
in  its  infancy  and  is  hedged  round  with  so  many 
safeguards  to  royalty  that  in  many  countries  it  is 
still  struggling  for  effective  existence.  For  all  our 
brave  talk  Europe  is  still  in  its  first  youth,  but  the 
tragedy  through  which  we  are  passing  may  yet 


THE  CURSE  OF  AUTOCRACY  81 

serve  to  stimulate  its  growth  as  surely  as  the  blood 
shed  on  its  fields  will  yield  return  in  the  fruits  of 
the  earth. 

Will  democracy  rise  from  the  conflict  not  only 
strong  but  determined?  Will  it  carry  destruction 
to  the  source  of  destruction?  Will  it  assert  its  in- 
alienable right  to  the  fruits  of  peace,  progress,  and 
utility?  I  pray  that  it  may,  but  I  do  not  disguise 
from  myself  the  enormous  difficulty  of  the  task. 
Demos  is  yet  so  unskilled,  so  easily  flattered,  so 
readily  deceived,  he  will  be  met  by  men  who  have 
all  the  traditions  of  humbug  at  their  finger  tips; 
indeed,  these  traditions  are  almost  their  sole  inherit- 
ance and  equipment. 

Yet,  "all  that  a  man  hath  will  he  give  for  his 
life,"  and  the  democrat  will  not  only  be  fighting  for 
his  own  but  for  his  children's  lives  and  for  the  well 
being  of  the  human  race.  He  will  have  faced  death, 
and  will  have  realised  that  though  man  may  die  but 
once,  the  condition  of  rule  that  makes  war  possible 
makes  the  doom  recm-rent  with  every  generation. 
He  should  know  that  the  old  traditions  of  rule  are 
in  the  melting  pot,  and  though  all  the  forces  of  re- 
action will  labour  to  shape  them  again  as  of  old, 
it  is  in  his  power,  if  it  is  in  his  will,  to  frustrate  their 
action. 

The  United  States  looks  to  have  a  voice  in  the 
making  of  peace.    Doubtless  it  will  do  useful  work, 


82  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

but  I  cannot  conceive  of  any  better  task  for  the 
great  republicans  of  to-day  than  to  give  the  western 
world  the  lead  that  may  help  it  most  of  all.  Most 
of  them  have  seen  monarchies  at  their  best  and 
worst;  all  of  them  are  patriots;  they  know  what 
republicanism  has  done  for  their  own  fair  land. 
Will  they  stand  silent  now  while  the  western  world 
is  faced  by  the  danger  of  the  perpetuation  of  a 
regime  that  has  little  or  nothing  to  justify  it?  If 
they  do,  they  have  missed  the  finest  possible  chance 
of  spreading  the  light  that  shone  upon  them  when 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  signed  one 
hundred  and  forty  years  ago. 

With  the  end  of  the  war,  if  it  does  not  result  in 
the  hegemony  of  Germany,  in  which  case  liberty 
will  be  no  more  than  a  name,  all  manner  of  schemes 
for  the  regeneration  of  Europe  will  be  afoot.  Few, 
if  any,  will  go  to  the  root  of  the  evils  that  have 
devastated  Belgium,  Poland,  and  a  part  of  France. 
It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  disposition  to  bring  about 
sweeping  reforms  will  not  find  ready  expression. 
We  are  all  too  close  to  events  over  here,  the  bless- 
ing of  a  clear,  serene  outlook  is  denied  us.  The 
United  States  has  stood  far  above  the  turmoil,  it 
has  seen  more  of  the  truth  than  has  been  visible  to 
any  combatant  nation,  it  can  survey  the  whole  situ- 
ation sanely. 

It  seems  to  me  in  these  circumstances  that  the 


THE  CURSE  OF  AUTOCRACY  83 

greatest  republic  of  the  world  lias  a  serious  duty, 
a  grave  responsibility.  It  has  thriven  on  a  gigantic 
scale  without  patronage  or  privileged  classes,  with- 
out titles,  without  such  honours  as  are  niercl}'^  hon- 
ours in  name.  Freed  by  the  Atlantic  from  the 
domination  of  Europe,  it  has  grown  in  power  and 
given  its  citizens  a  life  removed  from  the  worst 
anxieties  that  beset  the  Continent.  It  knows  what 
kingship  in  its  absolute  aspect  has  cost  Europe,  and 
it  embraces  within  its  wide  domain  the  children 
of  every  European  nation;  they  dwell  side  by  side 
in  peace  and  amity.  The  freedom  enjoyed  by  the 
republic  would  not  be  bartered  for  the  wealth  of 
the  world,  for  that  freedom  is  the  secret  of  its  eter- 
nal youth,  its  boundless  energy,  its  imtrammelled 
progress. 

There  are  men  in  the  States  to-day,  men  I  am 
proud  to  number  among  my  friends,  who  might 
speak  in  due  season  the  words  that  would  encourage 
Europe  in  the  only  fight  that  can  rightly  engage 
all  nations,  the  fight  against  the  curse  of  kingship. 
We  who  know  how  much  this  fight  is  needed,  who 
have  seen  in  the  gi'cat  republic  how  it  welds  to- 
gether the  most  diverse  faiths  and  nationalities,  be- 
lieve that  nothing  but  kingship  divides  man  from 
man  in  Europe  and  fills  every  frontier  line  with  the 
instruments  of  death. 

All  the  sympathy  of  the  best  elements  in  the 


84.  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

United  States  is  with  suffering  Europe  to-day,  but 
it  cannot  be  expressed  without  the  use  of  words  that 
will  sound  harsh  to  some,  impertinent  to  others, 
startling  to  all.  Yet  these  words  will  not  fall  upon 
deaf  ears.  They  will  bring  hope  to  many  for  whom 
the  future  is  utterly  dark,  who  believe  that  the 
forces  of  reaction  will  strive  desperately  to  over- 
come democracy  and  that  democracy  needs  prompt 
help  if  it  is  to  survive. 

Granting  that  America  has  the  right  to  be  heard 
when  the  time  comes  for  the  re-establishment  of 
peace,  she  has  the  right  to  deliver  the  message  of 
her  own  hundred  years  of  freedom.  Is  it  too  much 
to  hope  that  she  will  rise  to  the  height  of  this  su- 
preme occasion? 

If  she  will  not  shrink  from  this  duty,  she  will  en- 
sure a  victory  beside  which  the  ultimate  conquest  in 
this  war  will  appear  well-nigh  insignificant. 


X 

woman's  war  work  on  the  land 

The  cr^^  for  woman's  service  on  the  land  is  one  I 
endeavoured  nearly  twenty  years  ago  to  anticipate. 
It  was  at  a  time  when  the  anxiety  of  girls  to  earn 
their  own  living  was  making  itself  manifest  in  every 
class,  and  when  the  wages  paid  to  those  who  had 
broken  away  from  the  conventions  of  purely  do- 
mestic life  were  miserably  inadequate.  I  had  heard 
how,  in  the  Dominions  overseas,  English  women 
had  been  forced  to  learn  open-air  duties  as  best 
they  could,  I  had  realised  the  natural  instinct  of 
many  women  for  gardening,  and  I  had  no  doubt 
that  there  would  be  some  whose  courage  would  not 
flinch  from  an  experiment.  Looking  back  to  that 
season,  I  marvel  at  the  progress  feminism  has 
wrought  in  the  world.  Then  every  development 
that  was  sought  for  men  was  in  the  case  of  woman 
taboo.  The  only  thing  that  a  girl  might  do  in  the 
jarden  without  defying  the  conventions  was  the 
light  job  that  could  be  accomplished  without  any 
fatigue.     She  might  pluck  roses;   I  have  grave 

doubts  as  to  whether  she  might  plant  or  prune  them. 

85 


86  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

She  might  eat  celery,  but  the  digging  of  a  trench 
or  the  earthing-up  of  the  plants  would  have  been 
considered  a  most  "unladylike"  occupation.  In 
fact,  we  suffered,  as  a  sex,  under  the  spell  of  that 
horrible  word;  life  for  women  has  not  been  nearly 
so  futile  since  it  was  abolished. 

In  the  years  when  I  began  first  to  find  that  the 
urgency  of  social  problems  was  a  bar  to  the  further 
serenity  of  life,  I,  like  other  inexperienced  people 
with  reform  at  their  hearts,  dreamed  dreams  and 
saw  visions.  I  had  seen  at  Easton  and  Warwick 
the  women  of  the  working  classes  enjoying  the 
hard  work  of  the  garden  and  the  fields;  I,  too,  had 
tried  my  hand,  always  to  find  that  I  was  rewarded 
with  a  quickly  renewed  sense  of  the  joy  of  life. 
Even  when  weather  conditions  were  unfavourable, 
the  rest  after  labour  was  in  itself  atonement  for  the 
toil — it  was  so  unlike  other  rest.  Then  I  began  to 
see  an  England  in  which  girls  and  young  women, 
ceasing  to  be  merely  "ladylike,"  would  be  healthier, 
happier,  and  more  useful  than  they  had  been  in  the 
years  of  which  I  could  take  count.  I  could  not 
help  realising  that  the  desire  for  active  physical  ex- 
ercise could  not  be  limited  to  one  sex,  save  in  obe- 
dience to  a  convention  that  ignored  human  needs. 
It  seemed  to  me  as  though  the  truth  would  be  ap- 
parent to  everybody,  that  nobody  who  could  lend  a 


WOMAN'S  WAR  WORK  ON  THE  LAND      8T 

lielping  hand  would  "withhold  it.    Naturally  I  was 
soon  undeceived. 

I  was  assured  that  only  the  children  of  working 
farmers  and  labourers  could  possibly  milk  the  dairy 
herd,  that  gardening  work  in  many  of  its  aspects 
would  be  beyond  the  limits  of  the  capacity  of  the 
gently  nurtured.  The  girl  market  gardener  was 
voted  an  impossibility;  as  landscape  gardener,  I 
was  assured,  she  could  never  compete  with  a  man. 
Poultry-farming  and  stock-breeding  were  even 
voted  indelicate!  Household  management,  to  en- 
able girls  to  take  posts  as  housekeepers  in  public 
institutions  or  large  private  houses,  was  regarded 
as  something  to  be  acquired  without  training,  and 
even  the  commercial  side  of  farm  management  was 
vetoed  as  a  study  for  girls,  as  though  a  well-man- 
aged farm  would  be  the  worse  for  a  competent  book- 
keeper because  that  book-keeper  chanced  to  be  a 
daughter  instead  of  a  son  of  the  house.  I  could 
prolong  the  list  of  vetoes  and  taboos  that  were 
presented  to  me,  but  no  useful  service  would  be 
servTd  in  doing  so.  I  am  only  concerned  to  remem- 
ber now — after  nearly  twenty  years — that  I  was  re- 
garded as  an  unpractical  dreamer,  and  that,  as  I 
write,  there  are  letters  on  my  desk  asking  me  if  I 
cannot  recommend  lady  gardeners  and  agricultur- 
ists of  all  descriptions.  I  cannot :  they  are  all  fully 
occupied.    INIany  are  at  work  in  England,  not  a  few 


88  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

are  busy  thousands  of  miles  oversea — in  Canada, 
Australia,  and  the  United  States.  Think  of  the 
freedom  and  the  fullness  of  their  lives,  never  a  taboo 
to  stand  between  them  and  any  sane  development ! 
To-day  I  see  a  great  expansion  of  woman's  la- 
bours under  the  sun.  The  trouble  is  that  the  de- 
mand outstrips  the  supply.  The  public,  whose 
apathy  has  given  only  a  minimum  of  stimulus  to 
the  progress  of  the  girl  agriculturist,  has  become 
suddenly  clamant.  It  demands  the  impossible.  The 
girls'  agricultural  colleges  are  to  improvise  the 
highly  trained,  skilled  article.  It  is  as  though  they 
should  demand  the  finished  fruits  of  the  orchard 
before  the  budding  and  flowering  time  of  the  trees 
has  been  fulfilled.  I  am  hoping  that  this  will  not 
lead  to  a  reaction,  and  that  those  whose  demand  for 
ready-made  service  brings  inevitably  unsatisfactory 
results  will  not  regard  woman's  work  in  the  light 
that  their  own  thoughtlessness  must  shed  upon  it. 
Only  those  of  us  who  understand  the  curriculum, 
and  the  time  required  to  follow  it  to  the  appointed 
end,  know  that  you  must  be  thorough  if  you  would 
be  successful.  All  the  ordinary  problems  of  the 
open-air  life  must  be  faced  in  training  before  they 
can  be  overcome  in  the  practice  of  daily  life  in  farm 
and  garden.  To  us  this  is  a  commonplace;  to  those 
who  do  not  know  the  land  and  its  labor  it  comes  as 
a  surprise  and  an  annoyance. 


WOMAN'S  WAR  WORK  ON  THE  LAND      89 

I  established  the  Hostel  at  Reading,  near  the 
great  Agricultural  College,  in  the  year  1898,  and 
it  remained  there  for  nearly  four  years,  when  the 
Reading  premises  began  to  prove  inadequate  to 
the  purposes  I  had  in  view.  Even  when  the  ridicule 
ceased,  the  girls  had  not  been  popular  at  Reading, 
where  the  college  students  thought  that  they  were 
intruders  if  they  ventured  beyond  the  dairy.  There 
were  certain  advantages.  For  example,  the  heads 
of  the  house  of  Sutton  opened  their  gardens  at 
stated  times,  and  the  girls  could  see  the  most  skilled 
work  in  operation.  But  I  could  not  help  think- 
ing that,  if  the  idea  was  to  grow,  it  must  have  room 
and  a  congenial  atmosphere  for  its  development, 
and  so  it  happened  that  the  change  w-as  made.  We 
moved  to  Studley  Castle,  in  Warwickshire,  sixteen 
miles  from  Birmingham,  a  rather  modern  place, 
with  forty  acres  of  gardens  and  pleasure  grounds, 
wonderful  out-buildings — built  originally  for  rac- 
ing stables — and  nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  acres 
of  farm  land,  with  woodlands  and  water  in  addition. 
In  many  respects  this  was  the  ideal  place  for  the 
work  in  hand.  There  are  other  institutions  of  simi- 
lar kind  in  England  to-day,  and  I  am  not  claim- 
ing any  special  superiority  for  Studley.  If  I  write 
of  what  is  done  there,  it  is  merely  because  I  know 
exactly  what  work  is  being  carried  on,  and  the  full 
measure  of  success  that  attends  it.    Studkv  is  now 


90  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

run  by  a  limited  liability  company,  in  which  I  have 
no  interest  whatever.  It  differs  from  other  agri- 
cultural colleges  chiefly  in  the  atmosphere,  which  is 
that  of  Girton  or  Newnliam,  and  is  deliberately 
preserved  on  grounds  of  economic  policy. 

If  our  victory  in  the  world-war  is  to  have  in  it 
the  elements  of  permanence,  it  can  only  be  by  the 
thorough  equipment  of  those  who  go  out  into  the 
world  to  contend  with  the  most  highly  trained  na- 
tion under  the  sun,  and,  as  far  as  woman's  educa- 
tion is  concerned,  in  whatever  aspect,  it  has  the 
advantage  denied  to  the  education  of  boys — of  be- 
ing free  from  old  and  paralysing  conventions. 
There  is  nothing  that  must  be  done  merely  because 
it  has  been  done  from  time  immemorial,  and  the 
agricultural  colleges  have  been  modern  from  their 
inception. 

The  first  thing  to  be  considered  is  so  to  train  the 
students  that  they  are  able  gradually  to  develop  a 
measure  of  physical  strength,  and  at  the  same  time 
to  teach  them  how  to  obtain  a  maximum  of  result 
from  a  minimum  of  effort.  Many  an  untrained  man 
could  only  accomplish  with  great  exertion  what  a 
trained  woman  can  do  without  difficulty.  In  a 
little  while  not  only  do  the  spade  and  the  wheel° 
barrow  lose  all  their  terrors,  but  the  comparatively 
light  modem  plough  can  be  handled,  even  on  fairly 
heavy  land,  without  excessive  fatigue.     Then  the 


WOMAN'S  WAR  WORK  ON  THE  LAND      91 

balance  must  be  preserved  between  practice  and 
theory.  Ydu  Mill  remember  that  the  method  of 
combining  the  two  is  not  new.  INIr.  Wackford 
Squeers  taught  it  at  Dotheboys  Hall.  "W-I-N- 
D-E-R,  a  casement.  Now  go  and  clean  them." 
Perhaps  this  was  the  germ  of  the  idea — who  knows? 
The  lecturer  in  the  college  is  supplemented  by  the 
expert  in  the  field,  dairy,  and  garden,  and  the  stu- 
dent is  not  limited  to  the  grounds  of  the  institution, 
ample  though  they  be.  On  outlying  farms,  in  pri- 
vate gardens,  market  gardens,  at  country  flower 
shows  and  exhibitions,  the  pupils  of  this  and  other 
colleges  are  expected  to  demonstrate  their  efficiency, 
thereby  learning  how  the  familiar  problems  may 
vary  in  their  incidents  and  application.  There  is 
no  element  of  secrecy.  All  that  is  taught  and  all 
that  is  learned  is  open  to  the  inspection  of  the  sec- 
tion of  the  public  that  is  interested.  The  college 
has  terms  similar  to  those  of  school  and  university 
— thirty-nine  weeks  of  work  and  thirteen  of  holi- 
day— and  while  girls  are  admitted  as  soon  as  their 
school  education  is  finished,  at  the  age  of  sixteen 
or  thereabouts,  women  can  join  at  any  age.  If  they 
have  the  energy  and  detennination,  they  are  never 
too  late  to  learn.  For  school-girls  over  twelve 
years  of  age  who  intend  to  take  up  agricultural 
or  garden  work  when  school  days  are  over,  there 
are  holiday  classes  at  which  the  'prentice  work 


92  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

may  be  studied  under  the  most  pleasant  conditions 
possible.  Most  of  the  school-girls  who  take  this 
course  regard  it  as  an  ideal  holiday. 

For  the  benefit  of  adults  who  desire  a  special 
study,  short  courses  can  be  arranged  at  all  times, 
but  it  is,  of  course,  well  understood  that  such 
courses  do  not  make  the  student  truly  representa- 
tive of  the  college  tuition.  It  has  long  been  recog- 
nised that  you  cannot  make  agi'iculturists  or  hor- 
ticulturists in  a  hurry.  The  minimum  period  of 
complete  study  is  two  years,  but  the  complete 
course  that  turns  out  the  finished  student  is  a  full 
three  years.  It  is  in  view  of  this  hard  truth  that 
I  have  eyed  askance  the  suggestion  that  a  course 
that  is  to  be  practical  can  be  crowded  into  three 
months.  Such  a  term  would  hardly  avail  a  genius. 
As  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  see,  the  not  very 
considerable  percentage  of  failures  associated  with 
agricultural  colleges  is  due  to  the  inability  of  stu- 
dents to  distinguish  between  enthusiasm  and  stay- 
ing power.  They  have  not  realised  that  work  must 
be  done  at  every  season  and  in  nearly  all  weather, 
that  the  sun  is  not  always  shining,  and  that  the 
novelty  of  association  with  Nature  will  wear  away 
from  all  who  are  not  Nature-lovers  at  heart  and 
by  instinct.  That  is  why  I  am  afraid  of  short- 
term  training.  Two  or  three  years  develop  not 
only   aptitude,   but   character;   enthusiasms   have 


WOMAN'S  WAR  WORK  ON  THE  LAND      93 

time  to  take  a  fresh  and  long  lease  of  life.  Train- 
ing l)rings  confidence  too.  Girls  who  wish  to  be 
gardeners,  agriculturists,  poultry-farmers,  estate 
managers,  and  the  rest,  will  do  well  to  remember 
tliat  the  new  or  the  modern  methods  they  are 
taught  in  an  up-to-date  institution  are  not  neces- 
sarily followed  in  the  place  where  they  get  their 
first  engagement.  If  they  have  to  control  men, 
they  must  expect  to  find  a  certain  intolerance  of 
change,  a  certain  resentment  of  direction.  Unless 
they  are  thoroughly  sure  of  themselves  they  can- 
not supervise  the  work  of  others. 

What  the  student  has  to  remember  is  that  most 
of  the  methods  she  will  find  outside  her  training 
college  are  wasteful,  obsolete,  or  second  rate.  Sci- 
entific training  is  unknown  to  the  average  gardener, 
market  gardener,  dairy-farmer,  and  poultry-keeper. 
Our  old  countryside  is  run  on  amasingly  inept  lines. 
Foolishness  of  any  kind  that  has  behind  it  the  sanc- 
tion of  a  single  generation  is  sacrosanct.  If  a  father 
has  farmed  or  gardened  foolishly,  that  special  man- 
ned of  foolishness  is  sacred  to  his  son.  We  have 
always  relied  upon  "the  foreigner."  He  sends  us 
fruit,  eggs,  honey,  vegetables,  corn,  cattle  food; 
while  the  seas  are  open,  we  need  never  go  hungry. 
I  do  not  pretend  that  we  can  do  without  him  for 
everything,  but  we  can  certainly  do  very  much 
more  in  the  future  than  we  have  done  in  the  past, 


94  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

and  we  have  been  warned  by  our  Government  to 
do  it.  That  is  why  I  have  so  much  hope  for  the 
future  of  the  woman  on  the  land.  I  feel  that  her 
work  is  no  longer  concerned  with  hobbies  and  pri- 
vate profit;  henceforward  it  is,  in  effect,  a  kind  of 
public  service.  The  Government  is  avowedly  anx- 
ious for  the  future  of  the  land,  frankly  concerned 
to  check  the  annual  outlay  of  millions  of  pounds 
for  foodstuffs  that  we  are  well  able  to  raise  at  home. 
Why,  for  example,  should  we  spend  forty  thou- 
sand pounds  a  year  upon  honey,  to  name  what 
our  American  friends  would  call  "a  side  line," 
when  we  have  a  wealth  of  flowers  and  fruit  blossom 
that  would  not  only  yield  all  that  is  required,  but 
would  even  enable  us  to  substitute  honey  for  much 
of  the  sugar  that  is  only  sold  to  us  when  it  has  been 
chemically  treated  to  improve  appearance  at  the 
expense  of  quality?  Why  must  we  gather  eggs 
from  the  far  ends  of  the  earth,  and  bacon  from 
countries  where  pigs  are  fed  as  they  are  said  to 
be  fed  in  China?  When  I  think  of  the  thousands 
of  women  who  are  ready,  willing,  and,  if  properly 
trained,  able  to  take  a  hand  in  the  great  task  of 
feeding  the  people,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  seed  I 
sowed  in  1898,  to  the  accompaniment  of  much 
amusement,  derision,  and  hostile  criticism,  has 
grown  into  a  veiy  sturdy  and  healthy  tree.  I  even 
venture  to  think  that  the  fruits  will  be  more  refresh- 


WOMAN'S  WAR  WORK  ON  THE  LAND      95 

ing  than  those  of  the  Insurance  Act  itself.  As  far 
as  the  records  I  have  heen  able  to  examine  teach 
me,  there  have  been  very  few  failures  to  achieve 
success  among  the  women  who  have  taken  reso- 
lutely and  completely  to  this  comparatively  new 
walk  in  life.  The  students  have  done  more  than 
merely  earn  a  comfortable  living.  They  have  been 
the  disseminators  of  the  new  ideas,  the  modern 
theories  of  agriculture,  horticulture,  and  apicul- 
ture, the  introducers  of  order  and  method  into 
realms  where  chaos  ruled  amiably  and  ineffectively. 
In  many  cases  they  have  even  succeeded  so  far  as 
to  disarm  prejudice  and  to  persuade  omniscient  man 
that  a  method  is  not  good  merely  because  it  is  cus- 
tomary or  easy  to  follow.  And  what  they  have  done 
is  small  by  the  side  of  what  they  may  hope  to  do. 
What  is  needed  just  now,  when  the  Government 
is  really  awake  to  the  importance  of  woman's  work 
on  the  land,  is  an  extension  of  the  agricultural  col- 
leges and  a  series  of  State  grants.  At  present  the 
work  is  costly.  The  upkeep  of  a  big  institution  is 
expensive,  because  you  cannot  treat  the  land  pre- 
cisely as  you  would  for  utility  farming.  It  is  there 
to  teach  pupils,  to  carry  out  demonstrations.  So 
it  is  with  the  glass,  that  is  so  costly  to  build  and 
to  heat.  Then,  again,  professors — the  best  in  the 
country — must  he  asked  to  lecture;  and  while  agri- 
cultural colleges  are  in  the  heart  of  the  country, 


96  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

the  professors  are  probably  living  in  distant  uni- 
versity towns,  so  that  their  lectures  are  bound  to 
be  costly.  Let  us  remember,  too,  quite  frankly, 
that  there  is  not  much  money  for  the  girl  who  is 
not  able  to  start  a  little  establishment  of  her  own 
or  to  go  into  partnership.  There  is  a  happy, 
healthy,  useful  life,  there  is  valuable  service,  quite 
unrecorded,  to  the  public  at  large,  but  the  monetary 
reward  is  of  the  slightest  and  the  training  is  long. 
It  is  necessary,  then,  in  view  of  the  growing  de- 
mand for  the  work  of  woman's  hands,  that  the  Gov- 
ernment should  make  grants  to  the  established  col- 
leges as  they  make  grants  to  other  educational 
bodies,  and  it  would  be  well  if  every  County  Coun- 
cil that  does  not  conduct  an  agricultural  college 
of  its  own  would  give  a  few  scholarships  annually 
in  the  college  nearest  to  its  county  town.  These 
steps  are  needed  to  give  an  impetus  to  the  work 
that  is  now  being  done.  Had  they  been  taken  when 
first  I  pleaded  for  them,  we  should  have  been  in 
quite  a  different  position  to-day.  There  would, 
at  least,  have  been  enough  capable  workers  to  meet 
the  most  pressing  demands.  At  present  they  tell 
me  that  at  Studley  every  post  brings  applications 
for  gardeners  and  dairy  workers,  for  women  com- 
petent to  train  others,  but  there  is  not  a  single  dis- 
engaged pupil.    Doubtless  a  similar  state  of  things 


WOMAN'S  WAR  WORK  ON  THE  LAND      97 

obtains  at  the  other  colleges  in  Kent,  Worcester- 
shire, Sussex,  and  elsewhere. 

It  has  been  seen  that  properly  trained  women 
can  do  all  the  work  of  farm  and  garden.  Even 
ploughing  is  not  beyond  them,  save  on  very  stiff 
clay  soils.  They  are  entirely  successful  in  handling 
animals;  horses,  cows,  bullocks,  sheep,  pigs,  and 
goats  are  all  tractable  when  cared  for  by  women. 
They  are  taught  at  all  well-conducted  institutions 
to  substitute  knack  for  force,  and  they  have,  as  is 
admitted  on  all  hands,  the  right  temperament  for 
tasks  that  demand  not  only  time,  but  patience.  As 
beekeepers  they  do  very  well,  the  gift  of  delicate 
handling  standing  them  in  good  stead,  and  in  the 
glasshouses  they  are  easily  first.  Dr.  Hamilton,  the 
energetic  and  gifted  Warden  of  Studley,  tells  me 
that  she  finds  that  the  health  of  girls  engaged  upon 
the  land,  whether  in  the  garden  or  on  the  farm, 
is  good,  and  that  many  who  arrive  at  the  College 
in  a  delicate  state  of  health  grow  very  much 
stronger.  She  finds  that  the  work  makes  women 
not  only  healthy,  but  happy — presumably  because 
happiness  is  largely  a  product  of  good  health. 

Perhaps  the  needs  of  the  country  will  be  the  de- 
termining factor  in  sending  women  to  the  land  in 
the  summer-times  before  us;  but  we  may  take  it 
for  granted  that  one  of  the  results  of  war  will  be 
the  large  extension  of  the  realm  of  the  woman- 


98  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

worker  of  the  field  and  garden.  We  cannot  shut 
our  eyes  to  the  sad  truth  that  there  mil  be  war 
widows  in  their  thousands,  and  countless  girls  whose 
chances  of  married  happiness  have  been  destroyed. 
To  many  of  these  the  land  will  supply  the  only  ano- 
dyne that  life  has  to  offer.  In  hard  work  and  the 
open  air  they  will  learn  to  forget;  in  the  develop- 
ment of  garden,  or  farm,  or  orchard  they  will  find 
something  to  interest  them.  With  their  advent  we 
may  look  to  find  a  great  addition  to  the  national 
food  supply,  a  great  saving  of  money  that  has 
gone  hitherto  across  the  Channel  or  the  Atlantic 
Ocean. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  women  are  more 
likely  than  men  to  take  advantage  of  the  homeland 
opportunities.  Men  who  have  lived  strenuously  and 
dangerously  may  not  be  found  content  with  a  hand- 
ful of  acres  and  a  cartload  of  restrictions  at  home, 
when  the  far-flung  Dominions  overseas  have  so 
much  more  with  which  to  tempt  them.  I  see  that 
Sir  Harry  Verney's  Conmiittee,  appointed  to  con- 
sider the  question  of  land  settlement  for  soldiers 
and  sailors,  suggested  holdings  of  twenty-five  acres 
for  dairy-farming,  and  four-acre  holdings  for  pigs, 
poultry,  fruit,  etc.  These  last  are  to  cost  £24  per 
annum.  Consider  as  against  this  the  one  hundred 
and  sixty  acre  grant  of  the  Canadian  Government, 
the  additions  made  by  the  Canadian  Pacific  Rail- 


WOMAN'S  WAR  WORK  ON  THE  LAND      99 

way  and,  perhaps,  other  great  corporations, 
whereby  a  settler  finds  a  house,  farm  buildings,  fifty 
acres  broken  up  and  planted  with  wheat.  There 
the  rent  is  part  payment  of  the  purchase  price. 
I  do  not  think  the  Govermnent  is  going  to  hold  sol- 
diers and  sailors  with  anything  Sir  Harry  Verney 
and  his  committee-men  propose  to  offer,  but  I  do 
think  that  if  the  Government  will  make  a  like  offer 
to  the  women  of  England,  and  will  arrange  to  do 
for  them  what  it  proposes  to  do  for  the  men,  this 
latest  scheme  of  small  holdings  might  well  be  a  suc- 
cess. Women  could  and  would  make  an  agricul- 
tural colony.  They  delight  in  doing  small  things 
well;  they  are  frugal  and  temperate;  they  can 
make  much  out  of  very  little.  .  VV^hatever  their  war 
experiences  and  suffering,  it  will  not  have  developed 
in  them  the  spirit  of  mirest.  Their  ambitions  do 
not  seek  the  particular  kind  of  achievement  that 
appeals  most  to  men;  they  find  happiness  where  a 
man  might  find  boredom.  They  love  the  sense  of 
independence,  the  freedom  and  simplicity  that  coun- 
try life  affords  and  enjoins. 

Above  all  else  that  concerns  woman's  career  on 
the  land,  it  has  clearly  been  shown  now  that  in 
times  of  crisis  the  men  who  work  on  the  land  may 
be  called  away,  and  our  home  food  supplies  may 
be  jeopardised  by  their  absence.  In  these  circum- 
stances the  movement  must  spread.     The  flower 


100  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

and  market  garden,  the  field,  the  conservatory,  and 
the  outhouse  must  be  recognised  as  providing  a 
pleasant  sphere  of  activity  for  girls  and  women,  and 
there  is  more  than  enough  land  in  these  islands  to 
provide  small  holdings  for  many  years  to  come  for 
all  who  have  the  will  and  the  capacity  to  develop 
them.  In  conclusion,  let  me  utter  a  warning  that 
demands  the  attention  of  all  who  love  their  coun- 
try. At  the  present  time  we  only  produce  about 
twenty  per  cent,  of  the  food  we  eat.  For  the  rest 
we  depend  upon  our  mercantile  marine  and  our 
power  to  hold,  not  only  the  seas,  but  the  skies  above 
and  the  depths  beneath.  Without  any  comment,  it 
seems  to  me  that  this  simple  and  undeniable  state- 
ment should  suffice  to  settle  the  career  of  many  a 
sturdy  country-loving  English  girl. 


XI 

GERMAN   WOMEN   AND   MILITARISM 

Reading  the  record  of  Germany's  war  methods, 
even  those  of  us  who  are  endeavouring  to  think 
sanely  through  these  evil  days  must  be  impressed 
by  the  overwhelming  evidence  of  their  complete 
mthlessness. 

We  who  have  travelled  in  Germany  not  once,  but 
many  times,  know  full  well  that  harshness  and 
cruelty  are  not  associated  with  the  majority.  There 
are  countless  Germans  who  could  only  be  cruel  in 
obedience  to  orders,  and,  of  course,  every  German 
will  do  what  he  is  told,  just  as  the  Children  of  Israel 
did  when  Joshua,  who  appears  to  have  invented 
"frightfulness,"  was  carrying  out  his  merciless  cam- 
paign. If  we  admit  that  the  simple  German  of 
the  south  is  not  cruel  at  heart,  that  he  is  rather  a 
dreamer  and  a  sentimentalist  with  strong  love  for 
domestic  pleasures,  we  find  that  the  policy  of 
"frightfulness"  must  be  ascribed  to  the  military 
party,  consisting  for  the  most  part  of  Prussians, 
with  headquarters  in  Berlin. 

These  men  are  the  organisers  of  war,  and  speak 

101 


102  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

through  the  mouths  of  writers  like  Treitschke, 
Bernhardi,  and  the  rest.  It  is  they  who  have  torn 
up  the  treaties  and  conventions  that  were,  humanity 
hoped,  to  decide  the  conduct  of  war.  They  are  re- 
sponsible for  the  curious  outburst  of  national  ha- 
tred against  this  country  that  is  at  once  so  star- 
tling and  so  silly,  a  revelation  of  the  sad  truth 
that  Germany  is  suffering  from  neurosis. 

I  have  been  trying  to  trace  "frightfulness"  to  its 
source,  not  through  the  medium  of  books  or  papers, 
but  in  the  light  of  my  own  knowledge  of  the  coun- 
try and  my  past  acquaintance  with  some  of  its 
leading  men,  and  I  think  that  the  philosophic  his- 
torian of  the  times  to  come,  whose  vision  is  not 
obscured  by  the  smoke  of  battle  or  the  fury  of  com- 
batants, will  not  hesitate  to  declare  that  the  worst 
and  saddest  features  of  war  as  waged  by  the  Ger- 
mans are  due  to  the  fact  that  in  their  country 
women  are  kept  more  in  the  background  than  in  the 
country  of  any  other  great  Power. 

The  fault,  as  I  will  point  out  later  on,  is  not  that 
of  the  women,  but  of  the  leaders  of  German  fac- 
tion who  have  deliberately  suppressed  woman,  and 
of  nearly  all  the  leaders  of  German  thought  who, 
being  dependent  on  Government  favour,  have  sub- 
scribed to  their  policy  of  deliberate  suppression. 
Here  and  there  an  independent  thinker  has  arisen 
nearly  always  from  the  ranks  of  Social  Democracy. 


GERMAN  WOMEN  AND  MILITARISM      103 

Bebel's  book  on  women,  for  example,  is  a  standard 
work,  but  the  few  lights  do  no  more  than  emphasise 
the  surrounding  darkness. 

I^ook  round  Europe  for  a  moment.  Russia  is  a 
backward  empire  and  the  spirit  of  progress  moves 
over  it  with  slow  feet,  but  Russia  is  making  vast 
strides,  and  the  plough  that  will  trace  deep  fur- 
rows in  the  virgin  soil  of  its  social  life  is  drawn 
by  man  and  woman  together.  All  the  professions 
are  open  to  women,  even  those  in  which  women  are 
not  found  here.  The  Russian  engineer  who  planned 
the  newest  bridge  over  the  Neva  was  a  woman. 
JNIen  and  women  students  work  side  by  side  on 
terms  of  absolute  equality,  and  compete  for  honours 
that  often  fall  to  the  gentler  sex. 

Russian  women  of  the  educated  classes  are  more 
than  merely  well  informed,  they  are  brilliant.  Lin- 
guists, women  of  affairs,  they  have  a  grip  of  ac- 
tualities of  the  empire  of  which  they  form  a  sig- 
nificant part.  In  spite  of  autocratic  rule  and  lim- 
ited freedom  there  is  such  a  full  life  for  the  Russian 
woman  as  her  German  sister  has  never  known,  ex- 
cept in  dreams  of  emancipation.  In  Finland,  be 
it  remembered,  women  sit  in  Parliament. 

Turn  to  France,  and  it  may  be  declared  emphati- 
cally that  woman  rules.  Women  are  doctors,  bar- 
risters, and  scientists;  they  are  members  of  the 
Goncourt  Academy;  they  are  the  heads  of  some 


104  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

of  the  most  important  business  institutions;  they 
give  the  most  exclusive  salons  their  distinction. 
Public  opinion  is  moulded  by  them ;  their  influence 
makes  and  breaks  Cabinets.  Feminism  is  one  of  the 
strongest  forces  in  France.  Quiescent  to-day  or 
working  in  quietness,  this  force  will  dominate  a 
France  released  from  war. 

Even  in  Belgium,  of  whose  progress  we  hear  lit- 
tle, women  have  been  largely  responsible  for  the 
organisation  of  the  middle  and  working  classes,  an 
organisation  that  was  well-nigh  complete  before 
war  broke  out,  and  in  the  slow  rebuilding  that  is 
to  come  we  may  look  with  confidence  to  the  Belgian 
woman  to  play  a  leading  role.  Turn  to  a  group  of 
neutral  countries — Denmark,  Norway,  Sweden — 
and  it  will  be  seen  that  feminism  is  moving  with 
vast  strides  along  the  path  of  national  progress. 
Woman  is  asserting  herself  in  all  of  them,  con- 
tributing her  thought  to  her  country's  problems, 
taking  an  ever  important  place  in  its  councils. 

Alone  of  the  great  Powers  Germany  has  elected 
to  forget  or  to  disregard  as  a  negligible  quantity 
the  opinion  of  woman,  and  the  reason  is  not  far 
to  seek.  For  years  past  the  German  has  forgotten 
the  respect  and  reverence  he  owes  to  his  own 
womenfolk.  Kuche,  Kinder^  Kirche — he  calls  al- 
literation to  his  aid  to  express  a  growing  contempt 
for  the  sex  and  the  narrowest  possible  view  of  its 


GERMAN  WOMEN  AND  MILITARISM      105 

world  function.  Intoxicated  with  the  vision  of  im- 
perial domination,  he  has  regarded  his  own  sex 
as  the  one  motive  force  in  the  universe. 

He  has  not  watched  tlie  slow  awakening  of 
women  in  the  countries  around  him;  he  has  not 
noted  how  bonds  of  sympathy,  light  as  gossamer, 
yet  strong  as  steel,  have  stretched  from  country  to 
country,  binding  our  sex  in  a  large  and  ever  widen- 
ing sisterhood,  inarticulate  now,  or  at  least  hardly 
coherent,  but  only  waiting  for  their  appointed  hour 
to  assume  a  fuller  share  of  the  glories,  the  burdens 
and  the  responsibilities  of  life.  Woman's  influ- 
ence, silent,  world-wide,  pervasive,  has  been  treated 
by  the  evangels  of  Kultur  as  though  it  were  non- 
existent, and  in  the  hour  of  crisis  woman  as  a  united 
force  has  avenged  herself  for  years  of  neglect, 
scorn  and  brutalitj''.  She  is  everywhere  a  bellig- 
erent. 

I  do  not  know  the  country  in  Europe  where 
women  are  treated  as  they  are  in  Germany.  Not 
many  countries  can  vie  with  the  United  States  in 
the  attention  bestowed  upon  the  gentler  sex,  but 
as  I  have  endeavoured  to  show,  they  are  respected 
more  in  every  belUcrerent  country  than  they  are  in 
the  one  that  sought  to  rest  supreme  la  Europe. 
Even  in  Italy,  Spain,  and  Portugal,  where  women 
must  often  work  as  hard  as  men,  they  stand  upon 
a  secure  footing  of  affection  and  respect.     The 


106  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

smaller  courtesies,  the  greater  services  of  life  are 
theirs.  In  some  definite  measure  they  complete 
the  home.  But  you  cannot  bring  an  indictment 
against  a  whole  nation,  and  I  do  not  seek  to  do  so. 

In  tens  of  thousands  of  German  homes  the  wife 
and  daughters  are  loved  and  honoured,  but  in  the 
rank  and  file  of  military  circles,  even  among  the 
men  who  hold  official  positions  and  boast  a  certain 
standing,  woman  has  been  dethroned — she  is  re- 
garded as  an  incumbrance  necessary  for  the  produc- 
tion of  further  generations  of  supermen,  who  shall 
inherit  the  earth.  This  attitude  of  mind  reveals 
itself  in  the  action  that  speaks  louder  than  words. 
The  toleration  and  the  contempt  to  which  I  refer 
are  everywhere  apparent.  No  good-looking  woman 
is  safe  in  Germany  from  the  ill-bred  stares  and 
comments  of  the  men  with  whom  she  must  travel 
in  train  or  tram. 

If  women  enter  a  theatre  or  restaurant  their 
own  friends  and  relatives  do  not  rise  to  receive 
them.  They  are  liable  to  be  elbowed  into  the  road 
if  men  walking  abreast  can  occupy  the  whole  of 
the  pavement.  The  politeness  of  the  few  cultured 
Germans  (pardon  the  discredited  adjective)  merely 
emphasises  the  boorishness  of  the  vast  majority.  It 
might  be  that  the  German  is  waiting  for  women 
to  be  officially  recognised  as  human  beings  to  whom 
some  measure  of  courtesy  or  even  decency  is  due. 


GERMAN  WOMEN  AND  INIILITARISM      107 

Only  when  rudeness  is  "verhotevf'  will  rudeness 
cease. 

The  country  is  governed  by  men  for  men  and 
women,  but  according  to  the  marriage  rubric 
woman  is  actually  man's  sen^ant.  The  effect  of 
these  conditions  upon  the  morals  of  the  country  is 
deplorable.  They  give  a  cachet  to  vices,  even  the 
most  odious,  and  the  rate  of  illegitimacy,  about  10 
per  cent,  for  the  whole  empire,  is  about  doubled  in 
Berlin,  where  the  military  caste  is  supreme.  The 
morals  of  the  army  are  the  morals  of  Berlin,  and 
account  not  only  for  the  hideous  stories  published 
about  what  took  place  in  Belgium  and  northern 
France,  but  for  the  recitals  not  less  appalling  that 
one  gathers  from  officers  home  on  leave  who  have 
seen  sights  in  the  area  of  German  occupation  that 
cannot  be  set  down  in  print. 

Undoubtedly  these  recitals,  if  they  could  reach 
the  heart  of  Germany,  would  thrill  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  honest  men  with  indignation  and  disgust. 
I  do  not  believe  for  a  moment  that  they  represent 
the  inclinations  of  the  whole  nation.  They  are 
rather  the  action  of  that  section  of  the  nation  which, 
while  war  endures,  must  have  the  upper  hand,  and 
during  all  the  years  of  war-like  preparations  has 
reigned  supreme.  Against  this  aspect  of  German 
national  life  the  women  of  belligerent  and  neutral 
countries  alike  are  arrayed.     Whatever  their  re- 


108  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

sources  or  their  influence  in  the  councils  of  their 
husbands,  sons,  and  brothers,  it  will  be  devoted  with- 
out cease  to  the  destruction  of  a  militarism  that 
degrades  and  shames  womankind.  The  German 
woman  knows  in  her  heart  that  her  men  have  in 
countless  instances  become  perverts,  but  she  is 
dumb  because  she  is  forbidden  to  speak.  In  Prus- 
sia no  woman  may  organise  a  union  that  has  politi- 
cal aimsj  she  may  not  even  join  one. 

It  is  the  purpose  of  the  dominant  caste  to  keep 
woman  in  subjection,  to  restrict  her  activities  to 
the  kitchen,  the  cradle  and  the  Church,  even  to  deny 
her  the  mental  and  the  physical  development  that 
might  tend  to  lead  her  to  revolt.  Woman  may 
find  a  limited  salvation  in  the  conduct  of  a  busi- 
ness ;  throughout  the  German  Empire  not  far  short 
of  a  million  women  conduct  commercial  enterprises 
of  one  kind  or  another,  and  collectively  they  strive 
with  some  success  to  better  the  physical  and  moral 
conditions  under  which  their  sisters  live.  No  ef- 
fort of  which  they  have  yet  been  capable  has  ac- 
complished more  than  this,  their  condition  of  tute- 
lage remains  complete. 

I  do  not  pretend  to  be  satisfied  with  the  posi- 
tion of  women  in  England:  far  from  it;  but  here, 
as  in  the  countries  already  enumerated,  it  is  bet- 
ter far  than  in  Germany.  Women  mould  public 
opinion  to  an  appreciable  extent;  they  are  able 


GERMAN  WOMEN  AND  MILITARISM      109 

to  modify  the  life  of  their  sex  in  many  important 
particulars,  the  best  of  them  exercise  sane  influ- 
ence, and  all  are  sufficiently  well  treated  to  estab- 
lish a  definite  attitude  of  mind  in  men.  We  know 
that  no  British  or  French  troops  would  behave  in 
Germany  as  Germans  behaved  in  Belgium;  we 
know  that  the  honour  of  honourable  women  and 
of  helpless  children  would  be  safe  in  the  keeping 
of  the  French  and  British  officer,  and  that  he  would 
not  be  called  upon  to  restrain  his  men  from  acts 
of  lust  and  savagery. 

A\'e  know  that  there  is  a  public  opinion  the  wide 
world  over  among  free  women  and  women  strug- 
gling to  be  free  that  will  not  submit  to  the  domina- 
tion of  any  race  that  does  not  hold  woman  in  re- 
spect. It  is  on  this  account,  in  my  opinion,  that 
the  unbridled  and  tolerated  savagery  of  the  worst 
class  of  German  conscript  in  Belgium  and  France 
has  cost  Germany  more  than  the  loss  of  half  a 
dozen  pitched  battles.  Whatever  the  irritation 
caused  by  the  incidents  of  the  war,  the  Allies  know 
that  women  the  world  over  are  and  will  remain  on 
their  side,  for  the  hegemony  of  a  nation  that  treats 
women  in  peace  with  contempt  and  in  war  with 
"frightfulness"  cannot  be  contemplated  by  our  sex. 
We  know  that  in  fighting  for  the  cause  of  the  Al- 
lies we  are  fighting  for  the  most  downtrodden  of 
the  highly  civilised  women  in  Europe.     At  pres- 


110  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

ent  they  would  resent  our  aid — they  are  patriotic 
— they  have  suffered  terribly,  and  in  the  hour  of 
their  trials  they  mourn  and  forgive  those  who 
treated  them  ill. 

Later  on,  when  peace  returns,  when  the  world 
is  purged  of  violence  and  its  wounds  begin  their 
slow  and  painful  process  of  healing,  the  German 
women  will  recognise  that  we  have  been  fighting 
for  a  larger  cause  than  our  own;  that  we  helped 
to  force  the  doors  that  have  remained  barred  so 
long  and  to  break  the  chains  that  bound  the  women 
of  a  great  but  erring  nation.  Only  the  ultimate 
triumph  of  the  Allies  can  free  the  women  of  Ger- 
many, and  in  time  they  will  realise  the  truth. 

The  views  of  the  wisest  men  are  narrow,  and 
few  among  them  will  realise  or  admit  even  now 
the  truth  that  woman  is  now  a  factor  in  the  world's 
affairs.  When  this  war  is  over  we  shall  tell  in  no 
uncertain  words  what  is  in  our  hearts.  At  j)resent 
we  must  needs  be  silent.  If  those  dreamers  of 
world  empire  had  but  remembered  that  women,  too, 
have  minds  and  are  learning  to  use  them,  the  story 
of  the  great  world  tragedy,  even  if  it  had  to  be 
set  down,  would  have  been  widely  different  in  m'any 
of  its  incidents. 

It  was  Germany's  fatal  mistake  that,  not  con- 
tent with  dominating  its  own  womankind  and  sup- 
pressing them  whenever  and  wherever  possible,  it 


GERMAN  WOMEN  AND  MILITARISM      111 

believed  that  the  rest  of  the  world  was  equally  in- 
different to  the  treatment  of  its  mothers,  wives,  and 
daiifi^hters. 

Every  known  outrage  has  raised  fresh  fighters, 
has  strengthened  the  Allies  with  the  sure  force  of 
moral  sympathy  and  encouragement,  has  thinned 
the  ranks  of  those  whose  sympathies  were  with  a 
country  whose  marvellous  progress  provides  so 
much  material  for  admiration.  Who  can  measure 
the  responsibility  of  those  guides  and  teachers  who 
taught  the  German  to  develop  along  material  lines 
and  to  forget  that  woman  is  the  proper  spiritual 
guide,  and  that  as  man  loves  and  reverences  her  he 
sees  farther  and  deeper  into  the  heart  of  things 
— sees  life  sanely  and  sees  it  whole? 

Whatever  the  limitations  of  our  knowledge  we 
know  that  the  one  sex  completes  the  other;  that 
man  enlarges  the  vision  of  woman  and  woman  en- 
larges the  vision  of  man,  and  that  it  is  the  pe- 
culiar gift  of  our  sex  to  control  man's  passions, 
to  stimulate  his  humanity,  to  direct  his  ambitions 
away  from  dangerous  paths.  We  do  not  all  strive 
as  we  might;  we  do  not  always  succeed  as  we  de- 
serve, but  man  is  woefully  incomplete  without  us, 
and  the  spectacle  of  a  nation  that  has  despised 
womanhood  waging  war  shows  that  this  contempt 
corrodes  his  moral  fibre,  leaves  him  at  the  mercy 
of  his  worst  instincts  and  raises  up  against  him 


112  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

all  the  spiritual  forces  against  which  none  may 
strive  victoriously. 

We  women  who  have  never  handled  weapons, 
whose  only  place  in  the  area  of  strife  is  among  the 
maimed  and  helpless,  know  even  better  than  men 
that  the  race  is  not  always  to  the  swift  nor  the 
battle  to  the  strong.  When  history  has  recorded 
the  story  of  the  world  war  that  darkens  our  lives 
to-day,  future  generations  will  ask  how  it  was 
that  Germany  could  find  no  friends  among  the 
neutral  nations.  Her  Ambassadors,  official  and 
unofficial,  her  publicists  and  those  of  neutral  coun- 
tries who  were  not  ashamed  to  accept  her  subsidies, 
worked  with  true  German  thoroughness.  Truth 
was  never  allowed  to  stand  in  the  way  of  propa- 
ganda. No  lie  that  might  serve  a  useful  purpose 
went  unsanctioned,  for  the  great  end  was  to  sanc- 
tify all  means,  however  vile,  and  yet  in  the  hour 
when  even  moral  support  and  silent  sympathy 
would  have  been  of  the  greatest  value,  Germany 
looked  for  it  in  vain. 

It  was  easy  to  declare  that  the  whole  world  was 
jealous  and  misinformed;  such  an  excuse  could 
hardly  deceive  the  responsible  people  who  fathered 
it.  My  own  view  is  thfit  the  women  of  Europe 
and  the  United  States  turned  against  Germany 
when  the  manner  in  which  she  waged  war  was  first 
revealed  to  a  disgusted  world.    Their  hostility  was 


GERMAN  WOMEN  AND  MILITARISM      113 

not  merely  sentimental — it  was  psychological.  The 
German  attitude  toward  women,  already  ques- 
tioned, was  revealed  as  in  the  glare  of  searchlight, 
and  Womanhood  from  London  to  Petrograd  and 
from  Copenhagen  to  New  York  was  completely, 
irrevocably  antagonised. 


XII 

YOUTH   IN   THE   SHAMBLES 

It  becomes  increasingly  difficult  to  speak  one's 
mind  in  England  to-day,  even  though  one  has  no 
peace  scheme  to  propound  and  no  efficient  public 
servant  to  criticise. 

Liberty  has  vacated  her  throne,  or  as  much  of 
it  as  Privilege  would  ever  allow  her  to  occupy, 
and  the  Defence  of  the  Realm  Act  has  taken  her 
place. 

Consequently  it  is  very  hard  to  express  opinions 
unless  they  are  sufficiently  platitudinous  to  gain 
universal  and  immediate  acceptance.  Roughly 
speaking  we  are  all  of  one  mind  about  the  conduct 
of  this  war;  the  minority  in  opposition  is  so  small 
that  it  can  be  disregarded,  but  we  are  all  at  vari- 
ance as  to  method,  and  on  the  Ship  of  State  that 
steers  such  an  erratic  course  through  the  hurri- 
cane of  strife  there  is  hardly  a  passenger  who  is 
not  convinced  that  he  could  reach  the  goal  much 
more  rapidly  than  the  man  at  the  wheel  is  likely  to. 

Those  who  criticise  the  steering  are  suspect,  for 
the  national  temper  is  a  little  upset,  our  situation 

114 


YOUTH  IN  THE  SHAMBLES  115 

is  without  precedent,  and  an  Englishman  dislikes 
novelty.  I  cannot  help  my  belief  that  it  is  the  nov- 
elty rather  than  the  tragedy  of  the  hour  that 
troubles  him  most.  He  is  giving,  to  the  best  of  his 
capacity,  blood,  labour,  treasure,  but  he  is  not 
thinking  as  deeply  as  he  should,  perhaps  because 
he  understands  that  when  you  begin  to  think  and 
believe  you  see  a  great  truth  clearly,  you  are 
morally  bound  to  communicate  that  truth  to  others. 
Then  the  Defence  of  the  Realm  comes  in  and  you 
are  likely  to  be  hailed  a  traitor  to  all  good  causes 
by  the  first  person  who — with  or  without  under- 
standing your  views — disagrees  with  them ! 

Yet  for  all  the  prejudices  with  which  the  ex- 
pression of  opinion  is  beset,  it  is  hard  to  keep  silent 
when  something  presents  itself  to  the  mind  in  the 
guise  of  a  vital  truth,  and  now,  after  more  than 
two  years  of  war  have  forced  reflection  and  taught 
us  to  see  the  world  tragedy  as  a  whole,  there  are 
things  that  must  needs  be  said,  protests  that  must 
needs  be  made. 

Of  all  the  iniquities  that  are  associated  with  war, 
war  as  distinct  from  murder  I  would  add,  there 
is  nothing  quite  so  horrible  as  the  sacrifice  of  young 
life.  It  is  common  to  all  the  nations  at  war.  We 
read  of  boys  of  fifteen  fighting  in  the  ranks  of  our 
enemies,  and,  at  home,  of  boys  who  have  added  a 
year  or  two  to  their  proper  age  to  deceive  a  not 


116  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

too  inquisitive  recruiting  sergeant.  To  raw  lads 
in  their  utter  ignorance,  war  is  a  great  joy  and 
adventure;  they  are  proud  to  help  their  country 
and  to  be  redeemed  from  the  charge  of  being  "slack- 
ers." So  when  the  cup  of  life  is  hardly  at  their 
lips  they  go,  some  to  die,  some  to  be  maimed,  some 
to  return  prematurely  old  and  broken  down. 

While  the  plots  and  counter  plots  that  made  for 
war  were  being  hatched,  these  young  warriors  were 
in  the  nursery,  or  at  school.  Even  now  they  have 
reached  no  perception  of  the  real  forces  for  which 
men  strive ;  until  war  broke  out  their  lives  were  still 
supposed  to  be  under  the  protection  of  their 
parents. 

But  as  soon  as  the  State  is  beset  it  calls  for  aid, 
not  alone  upon  matured  men,  who  understand  and 
have  a  sense  of  responsibility,  but  upon  the  lads 
whom  it  ought  to  be  protecting  as  the  one  irre- 
placeable asset  of  the  next  generation. 

Wise  old  gentlemen  with  a  very  tolerable  imi- 
tation of  the  spirit  of  prophecy  in  their  hearts,  pens 
in  their  hands,  and  bees  in  their  bonnets,  wrote  in- 
dignant articles  in  the  best  read  organs  of  the  press 
that  our  downfall,  if  we  did  not  introduce  conscrip- 
tion, is  merely  a  matter  of  months.  Sometimes  it 
was  weeks.  The  time  given  to  us  varied  accord- 
ing to  the  measure  of  the  writers'  chronic  dyspepsia. 

Yet  if  these  people  would  only  think,  they  would 


YOUTH  IN  THE  SHAMBLES  117 

have  little  difBculty  in  admitting  that  the  lads  who 
have  been  well  educated,  well  trained  and  pre- 
pared with  infinite  labour  for  life  are  just  those  who 
should  not  be  surrendered  to  death  under  any  nor- 
mal conditions  until  they  have  fulfilled  their  pri- 
mary function  toward  the  State. 

I  will  go  farther  and  suggest  that  their  elders 
have  no  right  to  rob  them  of  the  few  years  in 
which  they  taste  the  joys  of  life.  I  was  told  re- 
cently by  a  man  who  knew  what  he  was  talking 
about  that  under  the  INIosaic  Code  the  Jews  did  not 
allow  their  married  men  to  go  to  war  until  they 
had  spent  one  year  with  their  wives.  A  man  who 
was  betrothed  was  instructed  to  marry,  and  even 
if  a  man  married  a  second  time  he  had  to  remain 
for  one  year  at  home.  In  this  way  the  continuity 
of  the  race  was  assured  and  the  Jews,  eminently 
a  fighting  nation,  preserved  their  virility. 

There  was  no  question  of  sentiment  involved — 
it  was  hard,  common  sense  applied  to  war.  And, 
horrible  irony,  the  British  Government  recognises 
the  simple  truth,  but  has  only  learned  down  to 
the  present  to  apply  it  to  farm  stock.  I  saw  last 
year  a  printed  notice  in  the  country  post-offices 
issued  to  farmers  by  the  Board  of  Agriculture,  tell- 
ing them  not  to  kill  lamb  and  veal  because  what- 
ever the  price  offered  the  removal  of  immature 


118  A  WOjNIAN  and  THE  WAR 

stock  is  dangerous  wastefulness  which  the  coun- 
try cannot  afford. 

Here  is  a  copy  of  the  notice: 

BOARD    OF    AGRICULTURE    AND    FISHERIES 


Special  Notice  to  Farmers 


Preserve  our  Flocks  and  Herds  ! 
Maintain  our  Meat  Supply! 


The  Board  of  Agriculture  and  Fisheries  strongly  urge 
all  Farmers  to  raise  as  much  stock  as  possible  during 
the  war. 

Their  advice  to  you  is : 

Do  NOT  send  breeding  and  immature  stock  to  the 
Butcher  simply  because  prices  are  attractive  now. 

Do  NOT  Market  half-finished  animals ;  it  is  wasteful  of 
the  country's  resources  and  is  against  your  own  interests. 

Do  NOT  kill  Calves — rear  them ;  it  is  well  worth  it. 

Do  NOT  REDUCE  youT  stoclc ;  when  you  cannot  buy 
stores,  buy  calves. 

Maintain  your  flocks  and  breed  your  sows ;  it  will  pay 
you  to  do  so. 

The  Board  of  Agriculture  and  Fisheries  make  the  above 
recommendations  not  only  for  the  National  Welfare 
but  because  they  believe  them  to  be  for  the  ultimate  bene- 
fit of  British  Agriculture. 

It  seems  almost  too  ridiculous  to  be  true  that  the 
Government  has  more  concern  for  lambs  or  calves 


YOUTH  IN  THE  SHAMBLES  119 

than  for  boys  on  the  threshold  of  manhood,  but 
the  facts  convict  them. 

For  myself  I  would  rather  see  a  thousand  of  the 
bloodthirsty  old  gentlemen  who  preached  conscrip- 
tion sent  to  the  front  from  their  club  smoke-rooms 
and  editorial  chairs,  than  five  hundred  lads  from 
whom  their  country  has  something  to  expect! 

I  do  not  think  I  am  a  sentimentalist,  certainly 
I  do  not  plead  for  the  exemption  of  mere  boys 
from  the  battlefield  in  order  that  they  may  have 
what  is  called  a  good  time,  though  I  hold  that  they 
should  not  be  deprived  deliberately  of  the  few 
halcyon  jj'ears  that  are  in  one  fashion  or  another 
the  reward  of  one  and  all.  I  would  work  them 
to  the  last  ounce  of  their  capacity  in  seasons  like 
these.  They  should  have  long  hours,  Spartan  fare, 
and  spells  of  physical  drill,  they  should  put  in 
eight  hours  of  labour  for  the  Government  in  the 
factory,  in  the  munition  works,  wherever  their  ser- 
vices could  be  best  employed. 

They  might  be  under  military  rule,  amenable  to 
the  same  discipline  as  the  soldier,  but  they  should 
not  go  into  the  firing  line,  because  they  belong  to 
the  next  generation. 

They  are  to  sire  it ;  no  nation  can  afford  to  leave 
that  responsibility  to  the  physically  unfit,  and  to 
those  who  have  passed  fighting  age. 

This  duty  done,  they  would  be  free  to  join  the 


120  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

fighting  forces  for  which  their  drill,  their  labour 
and  their  self-denial  would  have  prepared  them. 
My  soldier  relatives  and  friends  tell  me  that  the 
lad  in  his  teens  is  of  little  value  in  a  prolonged  cam- 
paign. He  may  have  all  the  necessary  courage,  but 
he  lacks  the  essential  stamina.  He  is  fitter  to  march 
and  endure  when  he  is  twenty-five  than  when  he  is 
nineteen,  fitter  still  at  thirty. 

But,  asks  my  critic,  where  will  you  recruit  your 
fighting  men?  I  look  round  at  my  men  friends, 
and  I  find  them,  up  to  the  age  of  fifty,  taking  their 
chance  in  the  forefront  of  things.  The  outcry 
against  the  married  man  as  combatant  is  valid  only 
in  so  far  as  his  family  depends  upon  him  for  sup- 
port. JVIy  friends  chance  for  the  greater  part  to 
belong  to  the  comfortable  classes.  They  have  en- 
joyed the  best  that  England  has  to  offer;  they  are 
prepared  to  pay  the  price,  with  their  lives  if  need 
be.  Above  all  they  are  articulate,  they  have  the 
franchise,  they  can  speak  their  mind.  Collectively 
they  support  in  one  form  and  another  the  condi- 
tions that  make  war  possible.  They  are  conscious 
of  a  certain  responsibility. 

Where,  for  example,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the 
responsibility  of  the  midshipman  on  the  torpedoed 
battleship?  I  take  his  bravery  for  granted.  I  am 
quite  convinced  that  could  he  read  my  plea  he  would 
disavow  any  shadow  of  sympathy  with  it,  but  I  am 


YOUTH  IN  THE  SHAMBLES  121 

concerned  for  tlie  country  and  not  for  him.  He 
lias  a  duty  toward  civilisation,  he  is  well-bred, 
highly  trained,  efficient.  I  say  that  the  State  owes 
him  at  least  a  few  years  of  manhood  and  should 
see  that  he  is  allowed  to  reach  maturity,  although 
he  is  neither  veal  nor  lamb! 

It  is  false  economy  that  raises  the  outcry  against 
married  men  as  soldiers.  They  alone  in  the  com- 
munity can  be  spared,  they  have  fulfilled,  or  partly 
fulfilled,  the  function  upon  which  civilisation  de- 
pends. Potentially,  if  not  always  actually,  they  are 
fathers.  Economists  insist  that  pensions  and  al- 
lowances are  an  extravagance  that  the  nation  carmot 
afford.  I  rejily  that  war  is  a  still  greater  extrava- 
gance, the  wickedest  form  of  indulgence  known  to 
mankind,  and  that  worse  than  war  is  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  fairest  hopes  of  the  future,  the  race  to 
come.  Again,  if  those  who  light  the  fire  were  com- 
pelled to  feed  the  flames  I  believe  there  would  be 
fewer  conflagrations. 

I  feel  that  1  do  but  set  down  facts  that  are  known 
to  thinkers,  who,  as  a  rule,  prefer  to  keep  silence 
at  times  like  these  lest  their  patriotism  be  suspect. 
After  the  war  they  will  deplore  the  ruin;  trustees 
for  the  generation  to  come,  they  will  see  that  they 
have  failed  in  their  trust.  They  will  shift  the  re- 
sponsibility on  to  the  nature  of  things,  they  will 
declare  that  war  was  inevitable  and  that  destruction 


122  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

of  all  we  hold  most  dear  must  follow  in  its  wake. 

Here  I  join  issue  with  them.  The  world  is  for 
all  practical  purposes  ruled  by  mankind.  Nothing 
but  the  catastrophes  like  the  tidal  wave  and  the 
earthquake  escape  man's  control.  Famine,  disease, 
and  mortality  he  can  arrest ;  he  can  increase  his  stat- 
ure morally,  mentally,  physically.  If  he  elect  to 
play  the  prodigal  he  does  so  at  his  own  risk,  but 
he  has  no  right  to  tamper  with  the  vital  resources 
of  the  generations  that  must  follow.  War  is  de- 
lirium, or  he  would  bear  this  fundamental  truth 
in  mind.  I  think  it  has  escaped  him.  He  is  im- 
mersed in  the  pursuit  of  the  end,  and  no  means 
are  spared.  Thus  we  hear  the  outcries  because  the 
fat  money  bags  are  growing  thin,  but  nothing  is 
said  of  the  great  asset  that  no  trading,  however  suc- 
cessful, can  restore. 

We  can  find  in  some  barbarous  land  wealth  only 
comparable  to  that  which  Sindbad  discovered  in  the 
Valley  of  Diamonds,  but  what  will  that  profit  a 
race  that  must  depend  upon  old  and  exhausted  stock 
to  renew  its  vitality?  The  desire  for  wealth  is  at 
least  one  of  the  contributory  causes  of  war,  the 
thought  of  wealth  wasted  makes  men  forget  they 
are  wasting  what  no  wealth  can  replace. 

I  am  sure  that  women  feel  this  eternal  truth 
in  their  hearts,  but  all  too  many  fear  to  be  thought 
afraid.     They  fear  their  own  mankind,  those  foi 


YOUTH  IN  THE  SHAMBLES  123 

whom  they  would  gladly  sacrifice  all  that  life  holds 
for  them  of  good.  They  fear  to  be  thought  jealous 
for  their  own  boys,  while  if  the  truth  be  told  their 
fear  is  all  for  the  young  sons  of  all  women  quite 
irrespective  of  nationality.  At  least  this  is  how 
the  situation  appeals  to  me,  and  I  dare  not  keep 
silent  if  there  be  any  medium  of  appeal  to  those 
who  think  with  me  that  will  set  my  thoughts  down. 
There  is  a  slumbering  conscience  of  humanity  only 
waiting  the  call  that  will  break  through  its  dreams. 
I  am  not  so  bold  as  to  believe  that  I  can  utter  it, 
but  I  may  perchance  stimulate  some  more  gifted 
pen. 

In  any  case,  I  cannot  hide  my  thoughts  merely 
because  they  may  meet  no  response,  for  after  all 
there  is  not  in  all  the  world  a  single  great  belief 
that  was  not  once  the  unregarded  possession  of  a 
single  mind. 


XIII 

THOUGHTS   ON    COMPULSION 

While  I  am  firmly  opposed  to  conscription  in  any 
form  that  does  not  embrace  national  wealth  and 
resources  as  well  as  men,  or  that  singles  out  one 
class  of  men  to  the  exclusion  of  others,  while  I 
believe  that,  even  subject  to  this  view  of  national 
obligation,  conscription  should  be  treated  as  a  war 
measure  and  blotted  out  of  the  statute  book  in  the 
month  that  sees  the  restoration  of  peace,  I  am  not 
writing  to  protest  or  to  complain.  We  are  told 
that  every  cloud  has  its  silver  lining,  and  when  the 
Government  decided  to  demand  the  services  of 
those  unmarried  men  who,  far  more  by  reason  of 
apathy  than  cowardice,  had  remained  to  be  taken, 
I  could  not  help  thinking  that  much  good  might 
come  of  it.  Against  the  hideous  doctrine  that  the 
end  justifies  the  means  we  may  set  the  equally  old 
saying  that  necessity  knows  no  law,  and  against  the 
compulsory  making  of  soldiers  which  is  an  evil,  I 
set  the  wakinjnj  of  the  national  consciousness,  and 
that  is  a  gain. 

For  centuries  England  led  the  vanguard  of  the 

124 


THOUGHTS  ON  COMPULSION  125 

workers  for  freedom.  Against  the  will  of  the  peo- 
ple the  power  of  the  great  barons  and  of  their  Kings 
bent  and  broke.  There  were  generations  in  which 
the  people  as  a  people  were  articulate,  they  stood 
up  for  their  rights  and  privileges  and  were  a  force 
that  few  dared  defy.  The  discovery  of  steam,  the 
growth  of  factories,  the  increase  of  population  and 
the  struggle  for  life  combined  to  make  a  large  sec- 
tion of  the  working  classes  helpless.  The  hideous 
poverty  and  ugliness  of  life  in  the  great  centres 
of  wealth  drove  men,  and  women  too,  to  shut  out 
the  ugliness  of  their  lives  with  the  aid  of  brief  spells 
of  dissipation.  Strong  drink  became  alike  a  source 
of  revenue  to  the  country,  a  source  of  "honours" — 
generally  paid  for  in  hard  cash — to  the  prosperous 
brewer  and  distiller,  and  the  source  of  brief  forget- 
fulness,  misery,  disease,  crime  and  savage  punish- 
ment to  those  who  sought  its  dangerous  solace. 
National  expenditure  and  party  funds  alike  clam- 
oiu-ed  for  the  maintenance  of  the  evil,  and  those 
who  are  most  concerned  with  what  is  euphemis- 
tically called  "keeping  the  working  classes  in  their 
places"  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  schemes  that  sought 
to  make  the  places  of  leisure  for  the  worker  more 
attractive  and  less  dangerous.  Pure  Beer  Bills  and 
legislation  to  restrict  the  sale  of  spirits  to  such  spirit 
as  is  matured,  met  with  no  effective  support.  Give 
the  worker  the  nineteenth  and  twentieth  century 


126  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

substitutes  for  his  old  time  panem  et  circenses  and 
he  would  continue  until  strength  failed  him  to  sow 
that  others  might  reap  and  to  earn  the  opprobrium 
and  contempt  of  those  he  enriched. 

Parliament,  immersed  in  politics  to  the  exclusion 
of  government,  cared  little  for  the  real  welfare  of 
the  people.  It  contrived  by  skilful  electioneering 
to  stimulate  their  interests  in  things  that  do  not 
matter,  and  when  they  were  not  wanted  at  the 
polls  their  representatives — save  the  mark — left 
them  severely  alone.  So  it  happened,  as  time 
passed,  that  the  old  interest  in  vital  questions  was 
passing  from  a  large  section  of  the  proletariat. 
Powerful  through  the  medium  of  their  Unions  they 
supported  these  great  organisations  for  little  bet- 
ter than  the  right  to  live.  It  was  so  hard  to  im- 
prove the  conditions  of  a  trade  or  a  group  of  al- 
lied industries  that  the  effort  to  this  end  left  them 
with  no  energies  to  enter  into  larger  fields.  Those 
leaders  of  the  people  who  have  the  gift  of  clear 
vision  could  meet  with  no  adequate  response,  they 
alone  could  see  the  wood,  their  followers  had  their 
gaze  riveted  on  one  particular  tree.  England 
tended  more  and  more  to  become  the  paradise  of  the 
capitalist  and  the  purgatory  of  the  working  man, 
and  because  he  was  always  protesting  against  con- 
ditions that  will  fill  future  generations  with  wonder 
and  shame,  conditions  improved  beyond  recogni- 


THOUGHTS  ON  COMPULSION  127 

tion  by  the  country  with  which  we  are  now  engaged 
in  a  life-and-death  struggle,  it  became  the  prac- 
tice of  the  comfortable  classes  to  denounce  the 
workman  and  all  his  ambitions.  He  was,  in  their 
view,  sent  into  this  world  to  create  wealth,  not 
to  enjoy  what  it  creates;  that  was  the  privilege  of 
his  betters.  The  Englishman's  natural  sense  of  fair 
play  has  been  obscured  by  the  newspapers  that 
pander  to  him  and  give  him  all  his  thoughts  ready 
made;  if  anybody  thinks  this  is  an  extreme  state- 
ment, let  him  turn  to  the  files  of  the  reactionary 
press  from  the  time  when  John  Burns  led  the  Dock- 
ers' Strike  down  to  the  outbreak  of  war  (and  since) 
and  see  whether  he  can  find  anywhere  a  solitary 
favourable  verdict  for  the  worker  as  against  the 
employer.     He  will  search  in  vain. 

There  is  a  certain  psychological  aspect  of  the 
labour  question  that  has,  I  think,  been  overlooked. 
A  generation  or  two  of  oppressive  conditions  tends 
to  produce  a  race  that  loses  national  consciousness. 
The  worker  learns  to  take  the  view  that  he  is  no 
longer  a  part  of  Great  Britain,  that  his  interests 
are  exclusively  personal,  like  those  of  his  employers, 
that  he  has  no  status  in  the  country  and  that  his 
business  is  to  get  the  most  tolerable  conditions  of 
life  that  he  can  secure  by  combination  and  agita- 
tion, and  to  ignore  the  trend  of  politics,  religion, 
social  progress,  and  the  rest  of  the  life  forces  of 


128  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

civilisation.  He  knows  himself  for  one  who  hews 
wood  and  draws  water,  it  suffices  him  to  carry  a 
minimum  of  logs  to  the  pile  and  buckets  from  the 
spring.  He  knows  that  there  is  for  him  no  glimpse 
of  the  larger  life  and  that  because  he  is  collectively 
a  multitude  there  will  be  keen  competition  to  bat- 
ten on  his  small  savings  or  surpluses.  He  has  the 
feeling  that  if  he  loses  his  job  he  will  take  his  place 
in  the  ranks  of  a  submerged  tenth,  ranks  easy  to 
slip  into,  almost  impossible  to  rise  from.  My  long 
intercourse  with  those  who  fast  that  others  may 
feast  has  revealed  this  attitude  to  me  in  a  hundred 
shapes,  all  tragic,  some  dangerous.  It  has  been 
the  despair  of  those  who  are  working  for  the  people 
and  know  that  if  they  would  but  combine  to  grasp 
the  sorry  state  of  things  environing  them  they  could 
"shatter  it  to  pieces  and  remould  it  nearer  to  the 
heart's  desire."  Unhappily  it  is  impossible  to  fight 
what  is  called  vis  inertice,  you  cannot  bruise  a 
feather  pillow  or  hurt  a  sack  of  sand  by  striking  it, 
and  while  long  hours,  scanty  holidays,  mean  pleas- 
ures and  continual  anxiety  dogged  the  footsteps  of 
the  working  classes,  it  seemed  impossible  to  secure 
the  unity  of  action,  the  collective  wisdom  that  would 
not  only  enable  labour  to  find  its  place  in  the  sun, 
but  would  destroy  the  parasites  that  thrive  upon 
it.  I  think  that  the  careful  observer  who  noted 
the  social  condition  of  England  down  to  the  late 


THOUGHTS  ON  COMPULSION  129 

summer  of  1914  will  be  disposed  to  agree  tliat  I 
have  not  overstated  the  case  or  put  the  ugly  light- 
ing unfairly  on  the  foreground  of  the  picture. 

Then  came  war  with  its  strange,  unmistakable 
revelation  to  the  working  man  and  working  woman. 
In  the  blinding  light  born  of  battle  they  saw  their 
country  assaulted  by  an  enemy  completely  trained 
and  organised.  Women  saw  that  their  own  rulers 
bad  been  too  immersed  in  the  great  games  of  party 
politics  and  business  development  to  give  proper 
thought  for  the  safety  of  the  country.  They  saw, 
too,  that  the  limitations  of  capitalism  and  capitalist 
were  visible  in  the  eyes  of  the  world.  They  could 
help,  they  could  leaven  the  dough  of  profit-making 
with  the  yeast  of  personal  sacrifice,  some  have  done 
so,  but  for  the  salvation  of  the  country  they  ap- 
pealed to  the  working  man.  Government  adopted 
some  of  his  own  panaceas,  they  accepted  schemes  of 
pure  socialism  as  props  for  the  pillars  of  the  State, 
they  taxed  riches  and  laid  sacrilegious  hands  upon 
the  Dagon  of  wealth  to  the  infinite  rage  of  certain 
T^hilistines  who  are  still  grieving  for  the  god's  lost 
hands  and  feet,  but  it  was  to  the  working  classes 
Government  turned  in  the  hour  of  their  distress, 
and  Labour  responded  nob]5\  Those  into  whose 
souls  the  iron  of  corruption,  disappointment  and 
indifference  had  not  entered,  set  themselves  to  la- 
bour seven  days  a  week  for  long  hours  in  evil  at- 


130  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

mosphere,  or  left  their  sweethearts  and  wives  to 
strike  a  blow  for  the  country  that  had  displayed 
to  them  more  of  the  qualities  of  a  step-mother  than 
a  mother.  Many  have  laid  down  their  lives,  and 
in  the  hearts  of  those  who  survive  national  con- 
sciousness has  been  re-born. 

The  democratic  comradeship  of  the  battlefield, 
embracing  all  classes,  has  taught  the  working  man 
that  his  foe  in  times  of  peace  is  not  so  much  the 
class  whose  representatives  are  of  his  own  blood 
brotherhood,  but  the  system  that  dominates  those 
who  sen^e  and  those  who  accept  service.  This  les- 
son learned  exclusively  on  the  fields  of  war  will 
permeate  the  factories  when  war  is  over.  One 
stumbling-block  to  progress  remained.  It  was,  I 
venture  to  say,  the  presence  in  our  midst  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  men  who  have  been  rendered 
listless  and  apathetic  by  life  conditions  too  easy 
or  too  hard.  Now  compulsion  has  reached  this 
class  it  will  give  them  in  return  for  unsought  risks 
and  labour  a  sense  of  their  place  in  the  body  politic. 
It  will  teach  them  that  whether  they  will  or  no 
they  have  a  part  to  play  in  shaping  the  destinies 
of  Great  Britain  and  that  the  reward  will  be  in 
proportion  to  the  sacrifice.  We  must  not  forget 
that  a  new  Britain,  a  new  Empire,  a  new  Imperial 
outlook  is  being  shaped  over  the  far-flung  area  of 
war.     It  will  not  be  only  to  the  British  Empire 


THOUGHTS  ON  COMPULSION  131 

that  change  will  come,  but  to  all  belligerent  na- 
tions. The  upheaval,  sure  as  the  succession  of  day 
and  night,  is  one  we  dare  hardly  comtemplate,  not 
by  reason  of  fear,  but  by  reason  of  hope.  To  take 
advantage  of  the  change  as  it  will  affect  our  na- 
tion, all  classes  of  the  community  must  prepare, 
and  nothing  could  have  clogged  the  wheels  of 
progress  in  the  near  future  than  the  presence  in 
our  midst  of  so  many  thousands  of  men  whose  in- 
activity would  have  been  bitterly  resented  by  those 
who  have  borne  the  heat  and  burden  of  the  day. 
Unity  of  action  is  a  condition  precedent  to  the 
close  and  merciless  revision  of  existing  conditions, 
the  ending  of  privilege,  the  widening  of  the  powers 
of  democracy,  the  whole  peaceful  solution  of  a 
question  that  two  years  ago  promised  to  develop 
into  a  war  worse  than  this  we  are  waging,  a  war 
of  brother  against  brother. 

I  repeat  that  I  am  opposed  to  conscription,  par- 
ticularly to  a  conscription  that  picks  and  chooses, 
and  does  not  demand  capital  as  freely  as  it  demands 
life;  equally  am  I  opposed  to  the  action  of  the 
young  and  unattached  men  who  shrink  from  as- 
suming their  proper  responsibilities.  That  they 
would  have  held  back  if  the  conditions  of  their  life, 
whether  favourable  or  unfavourable,  had  been  the 
true  conditions  of  an  enlightened  citizenship,  I 
sincerely  doubt,  that  they  should  have  been  forced 


132  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

to  undertake  as  a  duty  what  they  should  have  em- 
braced as  a  privilege  is  matter  for  regret.  Hap- 
pily they  will  not  go  unrewarded,  they  will  see  their 
errors,  and  they  will  come  back  to  a  country  they 
have  helped  to  save  with  the  keenest  determina- 
tion to  make  it  worth  living  in  as  well  as  worth 
fighting  for. 


XIV 

WOMEN   AND   WAR 

"Why  is  it,"  wrote  an  editor,  criticising  a  view  of 
women  that  I  had  put  forward,  "why  is  it  that 
woman  is  actually  a  war  lover  at  heart,  an  inciter 
to  and  encourager  of  war?  Can  you  explain  why, 
while  some  women  condemn  fighting,  the  great  ma- 
jority do  not  shrink  from  it,  and  even  regard  the 
fighting  man  as  the  proper  object  of  their  admira- 
tion?" It  was  a  challenge,  that  I  will  answer  to 
the  best  of  my  ability. 

In  the  first  place,  I  must  admit  that  the  state- 
ment is  true  about  countless  women.  Only  yes- 
terday I  had  a  letter  from  a  friend  to  whom  I  had 
written  my  sympathy;  her  only  son  was  killed  in 
the  British  advance.  "I  need  no  more  consolation," 
she  wrote.  "Harry's  colonel  has  sent  me  a  letter 
telling  me  of  my  poor  boy's  bravery.  I  am  proud 
to  think  that  he  has  lived  up  to  our  tradition — ours 
has  always  been  a  fighting  family,  you  know\" 

I  would  not  criticise  a  bereaved  mother;  I  can 
never  forget  that  my  eldest  son  has  been  in  the 
fighting  line,  that  my  other  boy  gave  up  Cambridge 

133 


134  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

for  the  aviation  school,  and  is  now  flying  in  France, 
that  my  son-in-law  is  a  soldier,  and  that  of  many 
friends  and  a  few  relatives  only  the  memory  re- 
mains. But  I  feel,  from  the  bottom  of  my  heart, 
that  the  death  and  glory  idea  is  wrong;  that  the 
attraction  of  medals,  ribbons,  stars,  orders,  titles 
and  uniforms  and  brass  buttons  is  false,  and  that 
an  ever-increasing  number  of  women  are  conscious 
of  the  truth,  not  only  here  but  in  France,  Germany, 
Austria,  Russia  and  Italy. 

That  consciousness  cannot  become  fully  articu- 
late until  the  war  is  over.  For  each  belligerent 
nation  the  duty  at  this  moment  is  clear — it  must 
fight  for  what  it  holds  to  be  right,  must  struggle 
for  victory  until  the  end.  When  that  end  comes 
I  believe  that  the  reign  of  the  old  ideas  will  end 
with  it,  and  that  all  women  will  recognise  the  truth 
that  is  already  clear  as  daylight  to  the  minority. 

Why  is  woman  actually  a  war  lover  at  heart? 
The  question  stings  me.  I  am  almost  reluctant 
to  answer.  Yet  though  the  fault  is  woman's,  the 
responsibility  is  man's.  Down  to  only  a  few  years 
ago  woman  was  no  more  than  man's  toy.  She  ex- 
isted for  his  pleasure  and  convenience.  If  he  cov- 
ered her  with  pretty  dresses  and  radiant  jewels  it 
was  because  she  was  his  chattel.  It  seems  only 
yesterday  that  a  married  woman's  property  became 
her  husband's  when  he  married  her;  that  she  could 


WOMEN  AND  WAR  135 

not  bring  an  action  at  law.  It  needed  the  cele- 
brated Jackson  case,  familiar  to  students  of  the 
feminist  movement,  to  decide  that  a  man  might 
not  lock  his  wife  up  in  his  house. 

I  believe  that  the  law  enabling  a  man  to  ad- 
minister "moderate  chastisement"  to  his  wife  has 
never  been  repealed.  A  woman  cannot  divorce  her 
drunken,  dissolute  husband  unless  he  ill-uses  her 
physically;  the  law,  unable  to  deny  that  woman 
has  a  body,  will  not  grant  her  the  possession  of 
a  soul.  Trashy  novels,  trivial  amusement,  unend- 
ing decoration,  freedom  from  the  development  of 
mentality  and  personality — these  are  the  things  that 
have  been  held  to  suffice  women,  and  though  there 
have  always  been  a  few  great  women  in  the  world, 
the  vast  majority  has  been  compelled  to  accept  the 
conditions  offered. 

I  cannot  help  thinking  that  if  there  had  not 
l)een  a  surplus  of  women  over  men  in  countries 
where  monogamy  rules,  change  would  have  been 
longer  still  in  coming;  but  there  have  always  been 
tens  of  thousands  of  women  for  whom  there  is 
neither  mate,  domestic  inactivity  nor  child-bearing, 
and  the  educational  progress,  though  leaden  footed, 
has  moved. 

From  the  Garden  of  Eden  to  Ibsen's  "Dolls' 
House"  is  a  far  cry,  but  it  was  left  to  the  great 
Scandinavian    dramatist   to    open    woman's    eyes. 


136  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

That  is,  I  think,  why  he  was  greeted  by  male  critics 
with  such  howls  of  execration — they  saw  the  foun- 
dation of  the  old  order  being  sapped.  Man  had 
appealed  to  woman's  vanity,  and  had  consequently 
developed  it  enormously;  but  the  motive  was  little 
higher  than  that  which  inspires  the  male  baboon 
when  he  goes  courting.  Ibsen  showed  woman  the 
result  of  her  submission. 

Only  the  historian,  looking  at  our  social  history 
when  the  youngest  of  us  "has  lain  for  a  century 
dead,"  will  realise  the  strength  and  progress  of  the 
feminist  movement  in  the  last  decade  or  two;  the 
barriers  it  has  surmounted  or  swept  away;  the 
barbed  wire  entanglements  of  prejudice  and  con- 
vention against  which  it  has  flung  itself.  Yet  I 
am  bold  enough  to  declare  that  had  universal  war 
been  mooted  in  1934  instead  of  1914  woman 
throughout  all  the  countries  of  potential  combatants 
would  have  combined  instantly  to  prevent  it. 

At  present  the  ranks  of  the  thinkers  are  too 
thin ;  woman  is  divided  against  herself.  The  worst 
foes  of  feminism  are  women ;  it  is  the  anti-feminists 
who  parade  the  streets  in  khaki,  who  band  them- 
selves into  wholly  unnecessary  and  sometimes  dis- 
reputable anti- German  leagues,  who  labour  as 
though  war  were  a  glory  rather  than  a  curse.  You 
will  not  find  militarists  or  anti-feminists  among 
the  glorious  sisterhood  of  the  hospitals,  for  they 


WOMEN  AND  WAR  137 

almost  alone  among  women  know  what  war  really 
is.  If  the  propaganda  of  feminism  could  have 
spread,  if  it  could  have  invaded  Germany,  where 
the  Church,  the  nursery  and  the  kitchen  are  ex- 
pected to  fill  eveiy  woman's  life,  what  a  very  dif- 
ferent answer  would  have  been  given  to  the  am- 
bitions of  rulers  and  the  blundering  of  politicians! 
In  how  many  million  homes,  where  sadness  reigns 
supreme,  would  there  have  been  the  simple,  harm- 
less happiness  that  is  the  birthright  of  us  all? 

Is  it  the  irony  of  fate  that  man  must  pay  the 
terrible  price  for  having  made  woman  what  she  is ; 
for  having  stifled  or  sought  to  stifle  her  common 
sense;  for  robbing  her  of  the  rights  that  she  pos- 
sesses by  reason  of  being  a  human  being;  for  dis- 
tracting her  with  gawds  and  frivolities,  and  seeking 
to  keep  her  merely  as  a  minister  to  his  pleasures  and 
a  mother  to  his  children?  He  has  paid  for  the 
supreme  folly  of  generations  with  the  price  of  the 
lives  of  millions  of  his  best  and  bravest,  with  the 
ruin  of  flourishing  cities  and  fair  country,  with 
the  poverty  of  the  generation  to  come,  and  with 
many  another  bitter  offering  of  which  he  is  not 
yet  fully  aware. 

Doubtless  there  are  still  in  our  midst  countless 
women  who  accept  all  that  is  happening  as  inevi- 
table; who  look  upon  it  without  realising  that  had 
the  sex  responded  to  the  ideals  of  feminism  and 


138  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

become  one  sisterhood  without  boundaries  and 
without  a  limited  patriotism  conditioned  by  the  ac- 
cident of  birth,  these  things  could  not  have  been. 
I  say,  without  hesitation,  that  the  future  of  the 
world  demands  the  elimination  of  some  existing 
types  of  women,  the  education  of  others,  and,  in 
the  end,  the  union  of  all. 

Man  was  not  born  merely  for  glorious  death, 
he  was  born  for  glorious  life,  and  in  the  systematic 
and  universally  condoned  slaughter  of  man  by  man 
there  is  neither  honour  nor  glory.  The  world,  prop- 
erly administered,  can  produce  enough  food  and 
clothing  for  all ;  it  has  work  and  a  measure  of  hap- 
piness for  all.  Our  enemies  are  not  Englishmen 
or  Germans,  Frenchmen  or  Turks;  they  are  igno- 
rance and  poverty,  disease  and  vice.  Woman  recog- 
nises the  truth — that  is  to  say,  thinking  and  eman- 
cipated woman  recognises  it — and  she  knows  that 
all  the  strife  that  tears  the  older  world  asunder 
is  fratricidal,  that  a  million  times  Cain  strikes  down 
a  million  times  Abel,  and  in  so  doing  deliberately 
obscures  the  Divine  Event  toward  which  all  creation 
moves. 

Woman  falters,  she  is  young  in  mental  growth 
and  still  very  weak,  though  growing  stronger  hour 
by  hour.  She  sees  nothing  of  war,  but  she  hears 
of  moving  incidents  by  flood  and  field  and  hair- 
breadth 'scapes  in  the  imminent  deadly  breach,  and 


WOMEN  AND  WAR  139 

her  sense  of  romance  so  largely  fostered  by  per- 
nicious or  trivial  literature  is  stirred  to  its  depths. 
She  wants  for  her  son  or  her  husband  or  her  lover 
some  of  the  dust  of  praise,  some  of  the  ribbons 
and  medals,  some  of  the  glory  in  which  she  will 
discern  some  pale  reflection  of  herself. 

She  falls  in  love  with  war  because  she  has  not 
the  least  inkling  of  its  realities;  her  mourning  gar- 
ments are  edged  with  pride.  It  has  been  left  to  this 
terrible  struggle  to  tear  some  of  the  bandages  from 
her  eyes  and  to  rob  her  of  an  unworthy  ideal. 
What  a  supreme  misfortune  that  world  tragedy 
has  supervened  while  she  is  growing  up,  before  she 
has  learned  to  grasp  the  power  that  lies  to  hand! 
In  instances  beyond  numbering  she  has  passed  the 
feminist  movement  by,  quite  content  to  hug  her 
chains  as  long  as  they  are  heavily  gilded.  She  does 
not  realise  and  does  not  believe  in  her  own  powers, 
and  in  Central  Europe,  at  least,  she  has  been  kept 
under  surveillance  all  the  time. 

England,  France,  and  America  are  the  great 
Powers  that  have  given  feminism  a  chance.  Rus- 
sia was  beginning  to  follow  suit,  but  the  oak  that 
will  in  years  to  come  defy  so  many  storms  and  shel- 
ter so  many  lives  is  as  yet  a  sapling.  We  must  face 
the  bitter  truth  that  had  all  our  sisters  accepted 
feminism  we  would  have  saved  man  from  his  worst 
enemy,  we  could  have  saved  him  from  himself. 


140  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

We  could  have  said — 

'^We  brought  you  into  the  worlds  we  fed  you  at 
the  breast^  we  guarded  your  tender  years.  When 
you  grew  older  we  gave  you  inspiration  and  the  love 
that  is  the  romance  of  life.  We  bore  you  children 
through  agonies  of  which  you  know  nothing;  we 
loved  you  with  the  love  that  is  woman's  whole  ex- 
ist ence.  You  shall  not  destroy  yourself ^  for  you 
are  ours  and  we  are  yours,  and  we  are  placed  on 
this  earth  to  lift  it  nearer  to  heaven,  not  to  drag  it 
down  into  hell.  Your  bits  of  shining  metal  or  rib- 
bons, your  uniforms,  your  personal  bravery  are  as 
nothing  to  us,  if  to  earn  the  one  or  prove  the  other 
you  are  to  kill  and  maim  our  husbands  and  sons, 
our  fathers  and  brothers.  There  are  greater  fights 
to  be  fought,  nobler  victories  to  be  won,  a7id  in  the 
only  war  worth  waging  we  can  move  by  your  side. 
Love  and  not  hate  must  rule  the  world.'' 

The  time  will  come  when  woman  will  speak  to 
man  in  this  wise,  and  he  will  listen  because  he  must, 
even  though  in  listening  he  remove  the  strange, 
obscene  gods  of  strife  from  his  Pantheon.  That 
the  truth  is  known  already  to  noble-minded  women 
throughout  the  world  is  to  me  the  most  vitalising 
comfort  that  these  days  can  yield.  That  so  many 
women  still  pass  it  by,  that  they  praise  war  and 
magnify  personal  courage  and  "martial  glory," 
that  they  still  foster  and  encourage  the  meanest 


WOMEN  AND  WAR  141 

hatreds  born  of  war,  is  I  think  worse  than  many  a 
disaster.  But  the  lesson  it  enforces  is  plain.  The 
time  is  not  ripe;  before  she  can  handle  the  power 
to  which  she  lays  claim  woman  must  abjure  her 
idols,  she  must  follow  the  path  of  pain  and  suf- 
fering a  little  longer,  she  must  learn  for  herself 
through  bitter  experience  how  great  a  curse  war  is. 
I  believe  she  is  learning  her  lesson;  I  believe  that 
the  hosts  of  the  unthinking  are  melting,  and  that  as 
the  real  meaning  of  glory,  heroism  and  the  rest  is 
brought  home  to  her  she  will  understand. 

Even  men  in  the  lands  of  death  and  desolation 
have  been  vouchsafed  a  glimpse  of  the  truth.  There 
is  nothing  quite  so  pathetic  in  modern  history  as 
that  mingling  of  foes  on  Christmas  Day,  1914,  in 
a  brief  truce  of  God.  Truly  the  light  was  brief  and 
soon  withdrawn,  not  to  be  rekindled  a  year  later, 
but  it  was  strong  enough  to  testify  to  the  brother- 
hood of  man  obscured  so  long  by  kings  and  states- 
men. 

Women  can  rekindle  the  light  so  that  it  will  not 
be  suddenly  put  out;  they  have  no  nobler  purpose 
under  heaven.  And  in  the  days  when  they  are 
come  to  their  full  stature  the  memory  of  those 
who  applauded  strife  and  were  dazzled  by  some  of 
its  exterior  aspects  will  be  utterly  and  happily  for- 
gotten. 


XV 

RACE   SUICIDE 

I  WAS  visiting  the  north  of  England  in  connection 
with  an  Industrial  Congress,  and  I  called  upon  a 
woman  whose  husband  worked  in  a  mine.  Her 
small  house  was  scrupulously  clean,  she  was  young, 
vigorous,  swift  in  thought  and  movement,  and 
gave  me  the  impression  that  nothing  came  into  her 
life  in  the  form  of  obstacle  and  surprise  without 
finding  her  ready  to  deal  with  it  eifectively.  She 
showed  me  with  a  certain  pride  the  small  collection 
of  books  on  social  subjects  bought  in  second-hand 
shops  by  her  and  her  husband.  I  remember  see- 
ing John  Stuart  Mill,  Ruskin,  William  Morris, 
Rowntree,  Henry  George,  and  many  another  fa- 
miliar name.  "We  have  read  them  together,"  she 
told  me,  "we  have  educated  one  another  since  the 
time  we  first  met  at  evening  classes."  I  remarked 
that  her  married  life  seemed  to  lack  one  thing  only, 
and  that  was  a  family,  and  I  quoted  the  Eastern 
aphorism  that  a  house  without  children  is  a  garden 
without  flowers.  She  smiled  a  little  sadly,  and 
then  I  noted  how  some  faint  lines  about  her  mouth 

142 


RACE  SUICIDE  143 

tightened  and  hardened,  robbing  her  of  a  certain 
charm.  "Lady  Warwick,"  she  said,  "we  earn  be- 
tween us  by  hard  work  from  day  to  day  between 
four  and  five  pounds  a  week.  It  has  taken  many 
years  to  reach  that  figure,  and  there  is  no  chance 
of  passing  beyond  it.  What  we  have  endured  on 
the  road  to  this  comparative  comfort  we  alone 
know,  and  we  don't  talk  about  it.  But  we  both 
believe  that  the  game  is  not  worth  the  candle.  The 
conditions  of  life  in  England  are  not  worth  per- 
petuating, and  neither  of  us  would  willingly  bring 
children  into  the  world  to  take  their  chance  and 
run  their  horrible  risks  as  we  did."  She  stopped 
for  a  moment  in  order  to  be  sure  of  her  self-con- 
trol, and  then  she  told  me  that  in  her  view,  though 
all  her  heart  cried  out  for  little  children,  sterility 
was  the  only  protest  that  could  be  made  against 
the  cruel  conditions  of  modern  life  under  capi- 
talism. "I  know  that  my  husband  and  I  are  de- 
sirables from  the  employer's  standpoint.  We  earn 
far  more  than  we  receive,  we  are  temperate,  hard- 
working, punctual,  reliable.  But  when  we  have 
settled  our  rent  and  rates,  clubs,  and  insurances, 
dressed  ourselves,  paid  tram  fares  and  bought  a 
few  books,  there  is  nothing  left  but  a  slender  mar- 
gin that  a  few  months'  illness  would  sweep  away. 
For  a  week  or  ten  days  a  year  we  may  learn  that 
England  is  not  all  as  hideous  as  this  corner  of  it. 


144  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

but  we  shall  die  without  a  glimpse  of  the  world  be- 
yond and  of  its  treasures  that  our  books  tell  us 
about.  If  we  stop  to  think,  our  life  is  full  of  un- 
satisfied longings,  and  though  we  don't  give  them 
free  play  we  can't  ignore  them  altogether.  So 
we  will  not  produce  any  more  slaves  for  the  capi- 
talist, and  I  can  tell  you  that  there  is  not  one  de- 
cently educated,  young  married  woman  of  my  ac- 
quaintance who  is  not  of  the  same  mind.  You 
could  go  into  a  score  of  houses  known  to  me  in 
this  town  alone  and  find  strong,  vigorous  women 
whose  childlessness  is  their  one  possible  protest 
against  the  existing  wage  slavery." 

Years  have  passed  since,  in  that  gloomy  little 
northern  town  with  its  congeries  of  mean  streets 
looking  meaner  than  ever  under  the  rain,  I  met 
the  speaker  whose  name  has  passed  from  me.  She 
may  well  be  approaching  the  time  when  Nature 
will  confirm  her  resolve  irrevocably,  but  the  mem- 
ory of  that  conversation  has  haunted  me  with  the 
vision  of  thousands  of  lost  souls  and  unhappy 
lives. 

I  know  now,  if  I  did  not  know  it  then,  that  the 
music  of  little  voices  and  the  patter  of  little  feet 
would  have  brought  into  that  poor  worker's  life 
many  of  the  joys  for  which  she  sighed  in  vain.  She 
did  not  know,  nor  at  that  time  did  I,  that  obedi- 
ence to  natural  law  ensures  a  happiness  that  is  in- 


RACE  SUICroE  145 

dependent  of  external  circumstances,  while  disobe- 
dience brings  in  its  train  an  ever-growing  mental 
discord  and  sows  the  seeds  of  disease  and  decay. 
Statistics  can  be  fascinating  friends  even  though 
they  be  formidable  acquaintances;  they  have  a 
rough  eloquence  of  their  own  that  is  more  effective 
than  honeyed  speech. 

The  birth-rate  of  England,  France,  and  the 
United  States,  associated  as  it  is  in  all  these  coun- 
tries with  the  death-rate  of  the  newly  born,  is  to 
me  one  of  the  most  depressing  signs  of  the  times. 
I  cannot  help  realising  that  in  many  cases  sterility 
is  not  the  deliberate  protest  of  the  wage  slave,  it 
is  the  selfish  protest  of  the  pleasure  seeker,  and 
in  a  small  minority  of  cases  the  genuine,  yet  nar- 
row, fear  of  the  eugenist  and  his  following  whose 
enthusiasms  have  outrun  both  knowledge  and  faith. 
Tolstoy  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  man  who  en- 
joys association  with  his  wife  for  any  purpose  save 
procreation  is  guilty  of  a  crime.  While  many  child- 
less women  live  celibate  lives,  particularly  in  Amer- 
ica, the  great  majority  do  not.  In  INIilton's  stately 
words  they  "of  love  and  love's  delight  take  freely," 
as  though  the  power  that  rules  and  guides  the  world 
could  in  tlie  long  run  be  outwitted  by  what  it  has 
created. 

To-day  the  civilised  world  is  at  the  parting  of 
the  ways.    War  has  riven  asunder  the  ranks  of  the 


146  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

best  and  bravest,  and  has  left  in  the  hearts  of  the 
survivors  so  vivid  a  sense  of  the  horrors  of  life 
that  many  a  man  will  hesitate  to  become  a  father 
lest  his  sons  have  to  take  their  place  in  time  to 
come  on  the  fields  of  war  and  his  daughters  chance 
to  be  among  the  dwellers  in  a  conquered  city.  All 
classes  have  been  gathered  to  battle,  one  and  all 
will  feel  the  responsibility  attending  the  failure  of 
our  civilisation.  While  many  will  believe  they  are 
responding  to  a  high  instinct  when  they  elect  to  fol- 
low the  line  of  least  resistance  and  leave  the  world 
a  little  poorer,  the  cumulative  effect  of  such  a  de- 
cision is  positively  terrible  to  contemplate. 

There  are  some  lines  in  Coriolanus  that  might 
have  been  addressed  not  to  those  who  banished  him 
from  Rome,  but  to  the  women  of  the  world's  most 
highly  civilised  countries: — 

"Have  the  power  still 
To  banish  your  defenders;  till  at  length 
Your  ignorance,  which  finds  not  till  it  feels. 
Making  not   reservation   of  yourselves. 
Still  your  own   foes,  deliver  you  as  most 
Abated  captives  to  some  nation 
That  won  you  without  blows." 

If  these  lines  are  really  as  appropriate  as  they 
seem  to  me,  it  is  because  the  women  of  the  civi- 
lised world  and  the  more  leisured  section  of  it  are 
on  their  trial.    There  is  going  to  be  an  unimagined 


RACE  SUICIDE  147 

shortage  among  tlie  best  elements  of  the  most  highly 
civilised  population,  a  shortage  due  in  part  to  the 
fashion  in  which  responsible  women  have  neglected 
their  duties  hitherto.  If  the  pleasure  lovers  de- 
cline their  share  of  child-bearing  on  the  ground  that 
it  robs  them  of  long  periods  of  amusement,  and  if 
the  finest  type  of  women  workers  refuse  on  the 
other  grounds  raised  earlier  in  this  paper,  what  will 
be  the  result  ?  There  will  be  a  sharp  social  cleavage, 
the  few  clever  exploiters  will  enchain  the  unfit  who 
are  produced  so  rapidly,  we  shall  develop  a  small 
class  that  governs  and  a  large  class  that  is  ruled,  all 
progress  will  come  to  an  end,  while  the  conditions 
obtaining  when  the  industrial  era  was  opened  by 
steam  power  will  be  revived  with  all  the  attendant 
horrors  in  some  new  and  unsuspected  guise. 

It  is  well  to  remember  how,  following  the  first 
trumpet  call  of  war,  our  hard-won  liberties  were 
stripped  from  us.  Some  of  my  American  friends 
say  it  is  because  our  free  institutions  were  not  very 
deeply  rooted,  but  I  am  well  convinced  that  if  the 
United  States  were  involved,  the  results  would  be 
much  the  same.  War  always  dethrones  Liberty, 
and  the  nation  that  can  set  her  up  again  when  peace 
is  restored  may  be  congratulated.  As  a  rule  the 
struggle  has  to  begin  all  over  again,  for  the  State 
advances  claims  that  are  incompatible  with  any  kind 
of  freedom  that  is  worth  having.    Only  the  will  of 


148  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

the  people  can  gain  liberty,  and  to  make  that  will 
sufficiently  strong  and  effective  it  must  be  ex- 
pressed by  the  best  human  material,  the  children  of 
the  best  types.  So  it  seems  to  me  that  race  suicide, 
evil  at  all  times,  becomes  in  seasons  like  this  an 
act  of  treason,  not  only  to  the  nation  but  to  civili- 
sation and  all  those  ideals  upon  which  civilisation 
waits. 

In  the  town  to  which  I  referred  on  the  first  page 
of  this  paper,  the  women  who  deliberately  discarded 
motherhood  might  between  them  have  raised  a 
strong  company  to  fight  for  the  rights  of  the  next 
generation.  They  were  shocked  to  consider  the 
travail  that  brought  them  beyond  the  reach  of  want, 
had  they  lost  sympathy  with  those  who  succumbed 
by  the  way?  Is  not  the  fate  of  these  last  the  more 
tragic  ? 

The  faults  and  failures  of  life  are  not  a  divine 
dispensation.  Providence  has  placed  us  in  a  mar- 
vellous world,  capable  of  raising  far  more  than  is 
needed  to  supply  the  reasonable  wants  of  one  and 
all.  That  there  are  misery,  injustice,  want  and 
inequality  must  not  be  charged  to  the  account  of 
Providence,  but  to  the  foolishness  and  immortal 
greed  of  man,  who  cannot  deal  equitably  with  the 
resources  of  which  he  is  the  trustee.  The  world 
waxes  richer  year  by  year,  for  we  are  gathering 
the  power  to  increase  production  and  to  distribute 


RACE  SUICIDE  149 

the  surplus  of  one  region  to  supply  the  deficiency 
of  another.  It  is  a  very  fair  and  beautiful  world, 
and  we  need  no  more  than  that  all  should  be  per- 
mitted to  share  what  is  produced.  To  enforce  this 
distribution,  to  see  that  it  is  enjoyed  in  peace  and 
tranquillity  is  the  appointed  task  of  a  strong  and 
vigorous  democracy.  The  primal  duty  of  women  is 
to  give  this  democracy  to  the  world  and  keep  its 
strength  renewed. 

Some  may  fear  that  women  "condemned  to  fer- 
tility" as  one  phrased  it  in  my  hearing  recently,  may 
be  unable  to  take  their  part  in  the  struggle  for 
emancipation.  But  surely  motherhood  enforces  the 
qualifications  of  women,  justifies  their  claims  and 
provides  them  with  the  material  to  train  for  future 
triumj^hs.  Olive  Schreiner,  in  her  magnificent  book 
"Woman  and  Labour,"  in  which,  however,  she 
wrote  of  the  birth-rate  and  its  incidents  without 
visualising  the  possibilities  of  world  war,  says  that 
some  birds  have  raised  the  union  of  the  sexes  to  a 
far  higher  level  than  humanity  has  reached.  The 
male  and  the  female  share  the  nest  building,  the 
incubation  and  the  feeding  of  the  young,  and  it 
was  impossible  for  that  fine  observer  to  note  any 
difference  in  the  task  of  the  sexes.  So  it  should 
be  with  us  and  will  be  when  we  have  developed  to 
that  standard.  The  labours  and  responsibilities  of 
the  home,  and  the  daily  work  will  be  a  part  of  the 


160  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

common  contract  and  bond  of  men  and  women,  and 
no  woman  will  be  disqualified  by  the  fulfilment  of 
her  duties  in  the  home  more  than  the  man  is  dis- 
qualified by  reason  of  his  labours  beyond  it.  We 
are  all  conscious  of  evils  that  throng  the  world, 
we  all  strive  to  better  them  in  a  degree,  few  of 
the  most  careless  fail  altogether  to  be  kind  in  some 
fashion,  however  haphazard,  but  if  the  women  who 
take  life  seriously  will  not  only  fulfil  the  command- 
ment to  be  fruitful  and  multiply,  but  will  do  their 
best  to  urge  their  reluctant  sisters,  a  single  genera- 
tion may  avail  to  restore  the  balance  of  sanity, 
equity  and  progress  throughout  civilisation. 

This  social  disease  of  race  suicide  has  not  been 
long  established.  It  came  into  France,  I  believe, 
as  a  result  of  the  law  that  divides  the  inheritance 
of  the  parents  among  the  children  equally,  it  has 
crept  into  England  and  America  chiefly  as  a 
product  of  overmuch  luxury  and  wealth.  Apart 
from  such  a  reason  as  calculated  protest  against 
social  inequalities,  it  is  due  to  the  methods  of  life 
that  soften  women  and  make  child-bearing  a  ter- 
ror. I  have  been  told  by  my  travelled  friends,  the 
men  and  women  who  have  been  to  the  far  ends  of 
the  earth,  that  in  the  lands  where  women  are  hardy, 
healthy,  and  vigorous,  there  is  no  trouble  for  the 
mother  at  these  critical  times.  She  recovers  her  full 
strength  in  a  few  days.    At  Easton,  in  Essex,  where 


RACE  SUICIDE  151 

I  was  born  and  brought  up,  and  at  Warwick,  where 
I  have  lived  so  much  since  my  marriage,  I  have  seen 
that  the  workers'  wives  who  live  frugally  and  ac- 
tively are  able  to  rear  large  families  and  retain  not 
only  their  health,  but  their  good  looks.  Casting  my 
memory  back  I  can  recall  the  time  when  great  fam- 
ilies were  the  rule,  and  not  the  exception,  among 
the  leisured  classes.  The  women  who  entertained  in 
great  houses  that  they  administered  in  every  de- 
tail, brought  their  six,  eight,  or  ten  children  into 
the  world  and  lived  long,  healthy,  happy  lives.  The 
modern  fashion  is  of  recent  date,  and  now  that  the 
war  has  stirred  the  heights  and  depths  of  human 
consciousness  the  old  bad  custom  should  pass,  for 
the  sake  of  a  world  that  the  madmen  of  mankind 
have  made  desolate.  At  no  period  in  the  history  of 
Western  civilisation,  has  it  been  more  necessary 
for  the  women  who  count  as  factors  in  world  prog- 
ress to  consider  their  duty  and  fulfil  it  to  the  ex- 
treme limit  of  their  power. 

I  think  that  the  need  of  the  United  States  is 
not  less  than  our  own,  for  it  sees  the  influx  day 
by  day  of  the  most  diverse  elements,  and  knows 
well  enough  that  the  genius  of  rule  belongs  to  the 
Anglo-Saxon.  The  negroid  element  does  not  for- 
get its  duty,  and  the  honest  class  of  immigrant  that 
seeks  to  share  the  benefit  of  an  enlightened  civilisa- 
tion is  hardly  less  prolific.     Against  all  the  prob- 


162  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

lems  that  my  American  friends,  and  they  are  many, 
have  set  out,  there  is  no  surer  safeguard  than  an 
ever  increasing  birth-rate  of  the  best  elements. 

I  have  never  felt  disposed  to  join  in  the  cry  of 
the  Yellow  Peril,  nor  to  think  well  of  those  who 
raise  it  wantonly,  but  certain  facts  stand  out  in  a 
very  bright  light  shed  upon  them  by  the  war.  In 
the  first  place  the  Allied  powers  of  the  Entente 
have  sought  the  services  of  both  yellow  and  black 
races,  and  have  by  so  doing  proclaimed  the  dawn 
of  a  new  era  in  which  all  questions  of  equality 
must  come  to  the  front.  Japan  is  very  wide  awake, 
and  China  is  still  a  slumbering  giant.  Given  sani- 
tary science  and  a  great  gift  of  organisation,  she 
might  rule  all  Asia.  The  Berbers,  Arabs,  and  ne- 
groid races  of  Africa  have  lined  our  trenches  and 
taken  part  in  our  attacks ;  one  and  all,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  the  Indian  soldiers,  have  learned  more  of 
war  in  the  past  year  or  so  than  they  had  ever  known 
before.  They  have  seen  the  weakness  as  well  as 
the  strength  of  the  white  man. 

Black  and  yellow  races  alike  are  extraordinarily 
prolific;  there  is  among  their  women  no  shirking 
of  duty  in  that  regard.  Very  soon  the  white  man 
will  realise  that  he  cannot  maintain  his  old  position 
unless  he  is  fully  prepared  to  accept  responsibili- 
ties far  greater  than  those  of  his  forebears.  If 
the  rate  of  his  progression  falls  while  that  of  the 


RACE  SUICIDE  153 

other  races  rises,  there  can  onl^'^  be  one  solution  in 
the  end,  such  a  solution  as  "Coriolanus"  speaks  of 
in  the  scathing  lines  I  have  quoted.  In  short,  if 
the  white  man's  burden  is  to  be  borne  there  must 
be  sufficient  white  men  to  bear  it.  Statesmen  will 
labour  in  vain  and  the  friends  of  progress  will  strive 
to  no  end  if  the  start  that  the  other  races  have 
gained  is  to  be  increased,  and  the  white  women 
of  the  world  must  decide  whether  or  no  they  are 
content  that  not  only  their  own  nation  but  the 
whole  standard  of  life  for  which  they  stand  is  to 
be  submerged,  or  whether  by  a  generous  interpre- 
tation of  the  duties  of  motherhood  they  will  enable 
their  people  to  remain  in  the  future  as  they  have 
been  in  the  past.  We  cannot  tell  what  the  final  har- 
vest of  war  will  amount  to,  but  with  the  dead,  the 
diseased  and  the  disabled,  it  will  probably  run  into 
ten  figures,  more  than  five  times  the  measure  of 
human  sacrifice  demanded  by  all  the  great  wars  that 
shook  the  world  from  Blenheim  to  Omdurman. 
Even  these  monstrous  figures  do  not  tell  the  whole 
tale,  for  there  will  be  among  the  dead,  thousands 
of  men  whose  talent  might  have  developed  into 
genius,  and  there  will  be  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  widows  left  in  the  full  flush  of  womanhood,  with 
all  their  possibilities  unfulfilled,  and,  in  countless 
cases,  beyond  the  reach  of  fulfilment.  To  put  it 
brutally,  our  civilisation  that  stands  in  bitter  need 


154  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

of  its  best  breeding  stock  has  deliberately  slaugh- 
tered a  very  large  percentage  of  it. 

This,  indeed,  is  race  suicide  in  its  worst  form, 
and  just  as  woman  hopes  by  her  emancipation  to 
dam  the  tide  of  war,  so  she  must  step  into  the  breach 
and  dam  the  tide  of  loss.  Emancipation  will  do 
very  little  for  women  if  when  they  have  obtained 
it  they  find  the  best  elements  of  the  white  races  in- 
creasingly unable  to  stand  the  strain  imposed  by 
war.  They  will  not  forget  that  the  black  man's 
women  are  bought  to  tend  his  land  and  enable 
him  to  live  in  ease  or  that  the  Mohammedan  in 
the  enforced  seclusion  of  the  harem  may  share 
his  favours  among  four  lawful  wives  and  as  many 
concubines  as  his  purse  can  furnish.  As  the  stand- 
ard of  civilisation  declines,  woman,  by  reason  of 
her  physical  weakness,  must  pay  an  ever  increasing 
penalty;  only  when  it  has  risen  to  heights  un- 
reached before  the  war  may  she  hope  to  come  into 
her  own  and  to  realise  ambitions  that,  dormant  or 
active,  have  been  with  her  through  the  centuries. 
The  whole  question  of  her  future  has  been  brought 
by  the  war  outside  the  domain  of  personal  or  even 
national  interests,  suddenly  it  has  become  racial. 

Down  to  a  little  while  ago  the  solution  was  not 
in  woman's  hands,  to-day  it  belongs  to  her,  she  has 
to  decide  not  only  for  herself,  but  for  all  white 
mankind.    It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  civilisa- 


RACE  SUICIDE  166 

tion,  as  we  know  it,  will  soon  be  waiting  upon  her 
verdict.  If  this  statement  seems  too  far  reaching, 
if  it  seems  to  challenge  probability,  let  those  who 
think  so  turn  to  any  good  history  of  the  world  and 
see  for  themselves  how  each  civilisation  has  been 
overwhelmed  as  soon  as  it  reached  the  limits  of 
its  efficiency  and  endurance.  In  the  history  of  this 
planet,  changes  no  less  sweeping  than  that  which  I 
have  indicated  have  been  recorded,  the  Providence 
that  has  one  race  or  colour  in  its  special  keeping  is 
but  the  offspring  of  our  own  conceit.  The  real 
Providence  that  dominates  the  universe  treats  all 
the  races  on  their  merits.  If,  and  only  if,  the  best 
types  of  women  will  embrace  motherhood  ardently, 
bravely  content  to  endure  the  discomforts  and  dis- 
cover for  themselves  the  infinite  pleasure,  can  the 
earth,  as  we  know  it,  survive  the  terrible  shock  it 
has  received.  Even  then  the  recovery  will  be  slow, 
and  the  price  to  be  paid  will  be  bitter  beyond  im- 
agining, but  we  shall  in  the  end  win  through, 
though  I  who  write  and  you  who  read  may  well 
have  settled  our  account  with  mortality  before  the 
season  of  full  recovery  dawns  upon  a  wasted  world. 
Should  we  fail  in  our  duty  then  we  must  pass  as 
Babylon  and  Egypt  and  Rome  passed  before  us,  to 
become  no  more  than  mere  shadows  of  a  name. 

The  least  among  us  may  dream  dreams  and  see 
visions.     My  own  dream  and  my  own  vision  are 


156  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

of  woman  as  the  saviour  of  the  race.  I  see  her 
fruitful  womb  replenish  the  wasted  ranks,  I  hear 
her  wise  counsels  making  irresistibly  attractive  the 
flower-strewn  ways  of  peace.  I  see  the  few  women 
who  encourage  war  turning  from  the  error  of  their 
ways,  and  those  who  have  spurned  motherhood  real- 
ising before  it  is  too  late  the  glory  of  their  neglected 
burden.  And  I  believe  with  a  faith  that  nothing 
can  shake  that  with  these  two  changes  and  a  wise 
recognition  that  the  fruits  of  the  earth  were  given 
to  us  all  not  in  accordance  with  our  gifts,  but  in 
the  measure  of  our  needs,  a  new  season  may  come 
to  this  distracted  world.  Should  all  the  high  hopes 
of  our  noblest  suffer  eclipse,  should  all  the  travail 
of  the  Christian  era  be  brought  to  nothingness?  I 
have  too  much  faith  in  my  sex  to  believe  it  will  let 
the  world  perish  if  the  real  meaning  and  signifi- 
cance of  its  duty  can  be  brought  home  to  it.  We 
have  been  ill  educated,  we  have  been  spoilt,  we  have 
been  corrupted,  but  for  all  that  there  is  a  certain 
soundness  at  the  heart  of  woman.  She  has  not 
shrunk  from  the  duties  she  understands,  even  the 
lapse  from  grace  that  recent  years  have  revealed 
will  not  outlive  this  understanding. 

The  responsibility  for  spreading  the  truth  rests 
upon  all  who  recognise  it.  There  are  countless 
women  throughout  the  world  who  by  sheer  force 
of  character  can  influence  their  women  friends  and 


RACE  SUICIDE  167 

have  learned  that  the  vital  problem  of  sex  is  not 
rightly  to  be  treated  as  though  it  were  not  fit  for 
discussion.  They  are  scattered  over  all  the  cities 
of  the  world ;  the  cumulative  effect  of  their  labours 
would  be  immense,  irresistible.  I  am  sure  that  the 
perils  I  have  outlined  are  known  and  feared  in  the 
Old  World  and  the  New,  that  they  are  mentioned 
in  the  highest  quarters  of  London,  Paris,  and  Wash- 
ington, and  that  the  transitional  period  separating 
words  from  deeds  must  needs  be  brief  because  the 
problem  does  not  brook  delay.  Many  women  will 
respond  without  questioning  to  the  call  of  duty. 
Some,  whose  life  struggle  can  be  understood  only 
by  those  w^ho  share  it,  may  ask  first  that  their  off- 
spring shall  be  treated  as  what  they  are.  State  as- 
sets, and  not  abandoned  to  all  the  evils  of  poverty. 
Others  will  want  to  know  that  they  are  not  raising 
sons  to  become  the  "cannon  fodder"  of  kings  and 
statesmen.  In  the  light  of  the  needs  of  the  white 
man's  world,  and  the  weight  of  the  white  man's 
burden,  are  even  these  assurances  too  much  to  ask? 


XVI 

THE  LESSONS  OF  THE  PICTURE  THEATRE 

It  came  upon  me  with  a  sudden  sense  of  revelation, 
for  when  I  went  into  the  theatre  my  thoughts 
were  heavy  with  the  weight  of  war.  The  friend 
with  whom  I  had  dined  had  insisted,  and  though 
at  first  I  had  refused,  she  had  compromised  with 
my  objections.  "Come  and  see  some  pictures,  if 
you  cannot  face  a  three-act  play,"  she  had  said. 
"I  can  promise  you  something  quite  remarkable, 
and  when  you  have  had  enough,  just  rise  and  I 
will  follow."  But  in  the  end  it  was  my  friend  who 
suggested  leaving,  because  she  had  a  long  day's 
work  before  her  and  knew  that  I  too  had  an  en- 
gagement nearly  two  hundred  miles  from  town. 
And  when  I  told  her  that  she  had  shown  me  more 
than  she  herself  had  seen,  and  that  I  would  not 
have  missed  that  couple  of  hours'  illumination  on 
any  account,  she  merely  said  she  would  not  attempt 
to  understand,  but  was  very  glad. 

I  have  been  greatly  concerned  with  problems  of 
peace  and  war  from  the  woman's  view-point.  So 
many  women  have  written  to  me  about  the  question, 

158 


LESSONS  OF  THE  PICTURE  THEATRE    159 

some  from  far-away  corners  of  the  States,  others 
from  remote  English  country-sides.  I  feel  the  fer- 
ment in  the  blood  of  every  thinking  woman;  I  know 
how  surely  and  inevitably  the  time  is  coming  when 
men  and  women  must  face  the  problem  of  world 
control  side  by  side.  It  has  seemed  to  me  that  only 
one  force  can  avail  to  end  war,  and  that  is  the 
force  of  education  supplementing  the  efforts  and 
strengthening  the  bands  of  brotherhood.  But  how 
should  one  make  the  dry  bones  of  education  live 
for  those  to  whom  education  is  now  no  more  than 
dry  bones?  We  can  reach  the  children  whose  im- 
agination is  yet  immature,  how  reach  the  grown 
up,  immersed  in  the  struggle  for  life  and  bringing 
even  to  their  leisure  the  harassed  mind  and  tired 
brain?  How  make  the  path  clear,  how  stir  to  the 
depths  their  slumbering  sense  of  the  world  that  lies 
beyond  their  working  day?  When  I  went  into 
the  Scala  Theatre  in  London  the  problem  was  a 
baffling  one,  when  I  had  seen  "The  Birth  of  a  Na- 
tion" I  realised  the  truth  that  such  pictures  in  the 
hands  of  men  with  insight  and  vision  may  yet  move 
the  world.  - 

We  of  England  may  well  forget  the  follies  of 
our  forebears,  and  the  American  with  Anglo-Saxon 
blood  in  his  veins  may  well  forgive  them,  while  both 
tingle  with  pride  at  the  accomplishment  of  those 
"jNIayflower"  Pilgrims  who  paved  the  way  for  the 


160  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

coming  of  a  nation  destined  I  think  in  the  near 
future  to  become  the  wealthiest,  most  powerful,  and, 
one  hopes,  the  most  progressive  on  the  face  of  the 
earth.  But  who  realised,  save  in  a  vague  and  uncer- 
tain fashion,  the  true  glory  of  America's  brief  his- 
tory? Who  could  visualise  the  scenes  to  which 
statesmen  and  orators  recur  from  time  to  time?  Of 
the  general  public  few  indeed  if  any,  to  the  rank 
and  file  the  experience  of  seeing  the  past  flower  into 
life  before  them  must  have  been  such  a  one  as  Keats 
describes — 

"Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken, 
Or  like  stout  Cortez  when  with  eagle  eyes 
He  star'd  at  the  Pacific — and  all  his  men 
Look'd  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise 
Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien." 

A  few  deep  thinkers,  men  with  vivid  minds,  must 
of  course  have  seen  beyond  the  limited  vision  of 
the  multitude,  or  nothing  so  sweepingly  compre- 
hensive, so  splendidly  realistic,  so  artistically  com- 
plete as  "The  Birth  of  a  Nation"  could  have  been 
devised.  It  is  poetry  almost  in  the  sense  that 
Hardy's  "Dynasts"  is  poetry,  while  its  educational 
value,  appealing  as  it  can  to  young  and  old,  learned 
and  illiterate  alike,  is  very  real.  Whatever  the  com- 
mercial value,  and  this  I  am  glad  to  think  must  be 
great,  the  value  of  the  spectacle  as  a  force  for  the 


LESSONS  OF  THE  PICTURE  THEATRE    161 

promotion  of  the  highest  order  of  patriotism  is 
greater  still.  I  can  only  feel  delighted  to  think  that 
such  a  task  could  be  so  carefully  undertaken  and 
so  satisfactorily  achieved. 

A  picture  play  may  not  seem  at  first  sight  a  very 
great  medium  for  presenting  the  truth  about  his- 
tory or  even  a  single  facet  of  the  great  diamond  of 
life;  at  least  if  I  am  honest  with  myself  this  would 
have  been  my  own  opinion  down  to  the  date  of  my 
visit  to  "The  Birth  of  a  Nation."  I  had  misjudged 
the  scope  of  the  picture  play  in  the  light  of  the 
hoardings,  vulgar,  fantastic,  or  silly,  that  make  the 
streets  of  even  the  small  provincial  towns  more  than 
necessarily  offensive.  I  did  not  understand  that  in 
the  hands  of  capable  and  imaginative  artists,  not 
only  the  present  can  be  put  before  us,  but  the  past 
can  be  reconstructed,  and  the  future  suggested. 
How  it  would  help  us  to  understand  not  only  our- 
selves, but  others  of  the  great  group  of  nations  if 
we  could  see  the  history  of  all  countries  presented 
with  something  of  the  skill  and  sincerity  that  have 
gone  to  these  graphic  outlines  of  America's  past! 
Often  in  Warwick  Castle,  as  I  have  pondered  some 
of  the  records  of  bygone  time  and  half-forgotten 
history,  I  have  marvelled  at  the  pageant  that  is  sug- 
gested, but  never  realised  by  the  pages  before  me. 
If  we  could  bring  our  history  before  ourselves  would 
it  not  teach  us  more  oi  our  triumphs  and  mistakes 


162  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

than  any  book?  And  if  the  history  of  the  struggles 
and  endeavours  of  other  nations  could  be  faithfully 
presented,  would  there  not  be  in  the  vision  some- 
thing to  make  us  more  sympathetic,  more  ready  to 
realise  that  we  are  all  passing  along  the  same  road, 
a  narrow  bridge  of  consciousness  spanning  the  river 
of  life  that  flows  through  eternity,  with  dreamless 
sleep  or  life  beyond  our  ken  on  either  hand  ?  Would 
it  not  help  to  teach  us  that  for  the  people  of  every 
race  that  brief  spell  of  consciousness  is  associated 
with  so  many  self-made  troubles  that  the  hell  of 
the  obsolete  theologians  is  rendered  quite  superflu- 
ous? We  cannot  in  normal  times  hate  the  men, 
women,  and  children  of  another  race  merely  because 
they  are  not  of  our  own.  The  same  virtues,  the 
same  strivings,  the  same  uprising  towards  the  elu- 
sive light  are  shared  in  common.  So,  too,  are  the 
prejudices  and  errors  with  which  we  strive.  Pre- 
sented with  sympathy,  and,  above  all,  with  humility, 
the  history  of  the  birth  and  subsequent  struggle  of 
all  the  nations  would  be  a  potent  force  for  peace, 
because  it  would  be  the  first  aid  to  understanding. 
I  think  that  the  men  and  women  who  have  paid 
their  vows  to  peace,  those  who,  while  realising  that 
the  present  war  must  go  on  to  the  end,  will  make 
any  sacrifice  to  deprive  it  of  a  successor,  may  find  in 
the  picture  play,  carefully  conditioned  to  the  needs 
of  our  fateful  times,  the  fulcrum  that  will  enable 


LESSONS  OF  THE  PICTURE  THEATRE    163 

them  to  move  the  world.  I  can  see  it  passing  from 
the  domain  of  tlie  theatre  to  the  lecture  hall.  I  can 
see  the  best  features  of  the  enterprise  enlarged  and 
developed  until  at  last  the  benefits  of  travel  and  a 
knowledge  of  history  are  put  before  those  who 
under  normal  conditions — or  rather  the  conditions 
that  the  ISIoloch  of  commercialism  has  made  normal 
— would  never  be  able  to  enjoy  either.  I  hold  and 
shall  always  hold,  that  the  ultimate  power  of  di- 
recting their  lives  is  in  the  hands  of  the  people,  it 
is  not  rightly  in  the  gift  of  Kings  or  Kaisers,  diplo- 
mats, statesmen,  or  soldiers.  The  sunrise  of  peace 
waits  upon  the  dawn  of  knowledge,  of  knowledge 
that  can  be  acquired  by  men,  women  and  grown- 
up children  of  the  working  classes,  the  classes  that 
accomplish  all  that  is  worth  accomplishing,  and  pay 
the  fullest  penalty  of  the  greed  and  vanity  of  those 
who  live  upon  their  labours.  But,  as  I  have  so 
often  insisted,  the  workers  are  inarticulate,  particu- 
larly in  the  southern  counties  and  round  the  me- 
tropolis of  England;  they  do  not  breathe  the  fresh 
air  of  the  north,  and  it  is  notorious  that  London 
(ruins  the  breed  of  the  workers.  The  greater  the 
city,  the  greater  the  unemployment,  the  keener  the 
competition,  the  readier  the  acceptance  of  conditions 
that  make  men  the  slaves  instead  of  the  masters  of 
their  task,  the  smaller  the  leisure  to  think  or  to 
study  the  curious  and  manifold  complexities  of  ex- 


164  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

isting  conditions.  Only  by  making  that  study  easy 
and  by  giving  it  the  form  of  relaxation,  by  stimu- 
lating the  ^i^cd  b''?Jn,  can  the  worker  be  roused. 
It  is  a  matter  of  fact  rather  than  of  conjecture,  that 
the  picture  "palace"  is  beginning  to  claim  his  scanty 
leisure,  and  his  tiny  surplus  over  the  paramount  de- 
mands of  a  minimum  of  food  and  clothing.  Demo- 
cratic in  its  essence  and  secure  in  its  appeal,  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  picture  theatre  can  be  developed  to 
the  most  instructive  and  useful  ends.  It  can  teach 
the  working  man  the  history  of  his  own  career  and 
long  struggle  towards  fairer  conditions  of  life  and 
labour,  it  can  show  the  world's  workers  all  aiming 
to  reach  the  same  legitimate  goal  and  it  can  enforce 
the  lesson  that  a  unity  of  ideals,  and  a  stern  re- 
jection of  the  counsels  of  those  who  would  make 
mankind  his  enemies  rather  than  his  friends  will 
make  war  impossible.  It  may  be  that  in  America, 
that  great  melting-pot,  as  Mr.  Zangwill  calls  it, 
of  all  jarring  nationalities,  the  lesson  is  more  ob- 
vious and  more  quickly  mastered,  but  there  is  a 
work  well-nigh  as  great  to  be  done  in  England, 
where  if  the  mixing  of  the  nationalities  is  less  no- 
ticeable, the  need  for  knowledge  is  still  greater. 
The  States,  wealthy  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice, 
entirely  self-supporting,  and  utterly  unchallenged 
by  any  Power  within  striking  distance,  may  well 


LESSONS  OF  THE  PICTURE  THEATRE    165 

laugh  in  the  face  of  those  who  would  impose  upon 
them  the  extravagant  horrors  of  mihtarism. 

We  shall  have  to  face  militarism  over  here;  it 
has  had  its  advocates  for  many  years,  and — why 
deny  it? — their  position  will  be  immensely  strength- 
ened by  the  war.  We  know  by  now  that  our  rulers 
cannot  save  us,  that  if  we  would  be  saved  it  must 
be  by  ourselves,  and  we  know  too  that  salvation 
will  be  born  of  knowledge  and  of  kno^^'ledge  alone. 
I  regard  the  picture  theatre  as  the  finest  medium 
for  the  spread  of  knowledge  now  before  the  public, 
and  I  am  confident  that  if  the  great  engineers  of 
enterprise  will  devote  their  energies  to  the  sane 
peace  propaganda  that  consists  in  showing  not  only 
the  history  but  the  aims  of  the  great  majority  of 
civilised  people,  the  lesson  will  travel  far  and  sink 
deep.  "The  Birth  of  a  Nation"  reveals  the  in- 
finite capacity  of  the  master  film  makers,  their 
resource  and  resources,  the  measure  of  skill  they 
can  command.  It  also  shows  by  reason  of  its  suc- 
cess the  immense  public  interest,  the  desire  to  learn, 
and  to  make  use  of  knowledge.  It  is  not  often 
that  a  venture  avowedly  commercial  in  its  aims 
can  perform  a  world-wide  service,  and  I  am  opti- 
mistic enough  to  believe  that  those  in  charge  of  such 
a  work  as  that  which  is  responsible  for  my  own 
conversion  and  enthusiasm  will  be  quick  to  see  that 
in  serving  themselves  they  can  serve  humanity. 


XVII 

TRUTH   WILL   OUT 

It  seems  only  a  few  years  since  Truth,  if  not  pre- 
cisely popular,  enjoyed  a  certain  reputation,  a  lit- 
tle definite  vogue.  To  tell  the  truth,  the  whole 
truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth  was  not  only  a 
nominal  obligation  in  the  courts  of  law,  but  a  tra- 
dition among  a  certain  class,  small  but  not  negligi- 
ble, of  English  men  and  women.  Truth  was  found 
in  all  sorts  of  places,  you  met  it  sometimes  in  Par- 
liament, generally  on  the  back  benches,  now  and 
again  it  was  seen  or  suspected  in  the  Press ;  it  fre- 
quented the  Pulpit,  and  was  not  unknown  upon 
the  public  platform  if  the  gathering  was  not  one  of 
the  political  rallies  that  it  resolutely  ignored.  To 
be  sure  when  intended  for  the  appreciation  or  ad- 
miration of  sensitive  folk,  it  was  always  dressed  up 
in  garments  that  hid  a  part  of  its  native  ugliness, 
and  over  the  hard,  unrelenting  features  a  certain 
veil,  enforcing  a  decent  obscurity,  was  scrupulously 
drawn.  The  higher  Truth  climbed  in  the  social 
scale,  the  more  the  trappings,  the  thicker  the  veil, 
while  on  the  lowest  rungs  of  the  social  ladder  there 

166 


TRUTH  WILL  OUT  167 

were  none  to  supply  dress  or  wrappings,  and  Truth 
stood  revealed  in  such  an  ugly  guise  that  only 
the  strong  minded  dared  to  look.  When  they  told 
what  they  had  seen,  all  those  who  lived  on  any  of 
the  rungs  above  them  deplored  at  the  top  of  their 
voices  the  indecency  of  the  revelation  and  devised 
thicker  veils  and  heavier  drapery.  And  yet  for  all 
men  and  all  women,  according  to  their  capacity  for 
looking  courageously  before  them,  Truth  existed. 
Among  most  of  those  who  live  in  comfort  there  was 
a  tradition  that  Truth  had  borrowed  the  head  of 
]\Iedusa  the  Gorgon  lady  who  incontinently  turned 
to  stone  all  those  who  looked  upon  her,  and  was 
ultimately  tricked  out  of  life  and  activity  by  Per- 
seus; on  the  other  hand,  the  people  of  the  under- 
world, the  world  that  does  the  rough  work,  had 
looked  upon  Truth  and  found  the  cold  implacable 
eyes  had  in  them  more  of  stimulus  than  death. 
They  even  went  so  far  as  to  hope  that  in  times  yet 
to  come  the  robing  and  veiling  of  Truth  would  be 
regarded  as  an  offence  and  the  duty  of  looking 
Truth  straight  in  the  face,  would  be  obligatory 
upon  kings,  statesmen,  clergymen,  county  and 
district  councillors,  journalists  and  lawyers  alike. 
Against  the  gross  indelicacy  of  this  democratic  sug- 
gestion there  was  not  unnaturally  a  revolt,  as  many 
of  those  people  just  mentioned  had  every  reason 
to  fear  that  such  a  decision  would  rob  them  of  oc- 


168  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

cupations  that,  if  not  actually  profitable  to  their 
fellow-men,  were  at  least  sometimes  dignified  and 
very  often  lucrative. 

Then  came  War,  and  the  people  of  all  combatant 
countries  formed  amid  and  despite  their  bitter  an- 
tagonisms an  unwritten,  unsigned  compact  to  the 
effect  that  whatever  the  divergence  of  their  aims 
and  policies,  they  would  at  least  conduct  one  part 
of  their  campaign  in  common,  against  a  common 
foe.  Agreements  having  lost  their  validity,  it  was 
impossible  to  reduce  this  one  to  writing,  and  they 
knew,  too,  that  actions  speak  louder  than  words. 
So  with  unanimity  that  forgot  all  causes  of  dis- 
pute, the  fighting  powers  found  time  and  means 
and  occasion  in  the  midst  of  their  awful  traffic  to 
wage  war  against  Truth.  In  this  country  the  naked 
Truth  may  no  longer  find  a  resting  place,  if  the 
well  in  which  Truth  is  said  to  dwell  could  be  lo- 
cated it  would  incontinently  be  filled  up  and  no 
material  would  be  regarded  as  too  poisonous  for 
the  purpose.  As  the  well  cannot  be  located,  the 
Defence  of  the  Realm  Act  has,  in  these  islands  in- 
stituted sumptuary  laws  so  strict  that  Truth  is  now 
robed,  veiled,  and  manacled  past  recognition.  The 
delight  of  those  who  have  suffered  from  the  con- 
stant fear  of  the  apparition,  who  have  found  their 
enjoyment  of  the  feast  of  life  constantly  menaced 
by  the  report  that  Truth  was  in  the  neighbourhood, 


TRUTH  WIIX  OUT  169 

is  unbounded.  It  is  admitted  by  every  government 
tb'it  Truth  is  one  of  Ihc  yreatest  obstacles  to  ibe 
proper  progress  of  universal  destruction  and  all 
Govermiicnts  have  substituted  in  the  inLcrcsLs  of 
public  digestion  Fiction,  a  far  more  popular  crea- 
tion and  more  palatable  too.  They  call  it  by  the 
title  of  Official  Report.  If  one  Report  contradicts 
and  is  contradicted  by  all  the  others,  you  can  at 
least  pay  your  money  and  take  your  choice  and 
the  task  of  selection  is  eased  by  the  certain  knowl- 
edge that  Truth  is  not  admitted  to  any. 

In  the  Parliaments  of  the  world  responsible 
speakers  have  but  to  declare  that  the  irresponsible 
ones  are  endeavouring  to  bring  back  Truth  to  the 
high  assembly,  and  every  one  of  Fiction's  count- 
less adherents  will  rise  in  his  place  to  protest.  In 
the  pulpit,  to  which  Truth  still  seeks  admittance, 
the  veil  has  become  a  mask,  and  the  garments  have 
a  double  thickness,  but  in  the  Courts  of  whatever 
kind  and  in  Fleet  Street  it  has  been  found  that  the 
precautions  in  vogue  before  the  war  are  sufficiently 
adequate. 

To  any  mortal  such  persecution  had  been  fatal, 
but  Truth  is  immortal  and  persists.  Not  even  the 
Jews  whose  sufferings  are  eternal,  or  the  Belgians, 
Poles,  Armenians,  Servians,  and  others  whose  per- 
secution though  intolerable  is  temporary,  strive  to 
recover   their  vanished   freedom   as   resolutely   as 


170  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

Truth.  The  harder  you  use  it,  the  greater  its  per- 
sistence. Drive  it  out  at  the  door  it  returns  by 
the  window,  an  indefatigable,  untiring  immortal, 
seemingly  unconscious  of  the  loss  of  popularity, 
convinced  that  it  has  a  place  in  the  great  scheme 
of  things.  It  whispers  to  kings  on  their  thrones, 
and  to  chancellors  in  their  studies,  to  statesmen  on 
Government  and  opposition  benches,  to  clergymen 
in  their  pulpits,  lawyers  in  their  consulting  rooms ; 
passing  by  janitor,  secretary,  and  a  sub-editorial 
array,  it  even  invades  the  editor's  desk,  persistent 
though  ignored.  Trampled  upon,  cast  aside,  ig- 
nored, eviscerated,  turned  inside  out,  confuted,  ob- 
scured, denied,  perverted,  misunderstood  and 
damned,  it  still  labours,  powerful  as  in  the  days 
when  old  Thomas  Carlyle  watched  its  progress 
through  the  world  and  hailed  it  alone  immortal. 
With  a  striking  disregard  of  the  laws  of  emer- 
gency and  confusion,  it  declines  to  be  regarded 
as  an  enemy  alien.  With  an  utter  contempt  for 
a  Fiction  entrenched  behind  all  the  barbed  wires 
of  popularity,  it  whispers  the  most  disconcerting 
statements  to  those  who  hoped  or  believed  that  it 
was  dead.  None  can  say  what  form  the  instruc- 
tions, warnings,  and  admonitions  take,  but  all  may 
guess  them,  and  the  temptation  so  to  do  is  ever 
present. 

I  think  that  the  one  outstanding  fact  upon  which 


TRUTH  WILL  OUT  171 

Truth  insists  is  that  until  it  is  allowed  to  prevail 
there  can  be  no  peace  in  the  world,  that  even  vic- 
tories must  be  unavailing  while  the  hard-won  les- 
sons they  bring  are  taught  in  terms  of  fiction. 
Truth  tells  us  that  the  fog  of  war  is  hardly  more 
horrible  than  the  fog  of  falsehood;  product  of  a 
poison  gas  that  is  manufactured  by  every  country 
alike.  To  the  Prussians  who  are  in  our  midst  striv- 
ing to  fasten  upon  us  the  fetters  fashioned  by  our 
enemies  for  the  control  of  all  liberty,  comes  the  se- 
cret warning  that  such  fetters  will  not  fit  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  people,  that  the  rivets  will  not  hold,  that 
they  will  be  torn  asunder  and  even  used  as  weapons 
against  all  forgers.  Truth  will  tell  those  who  seek 
to  effect  economies  at  the  expense  of  education  that 
only  sound  training  and  diligent  application  to 
every  form  of  activity  can  enable  us  to  hold  our 
own  against  Germany,  whether  the  defeat  of  that 
country  be  whole  or  partial.  Truth  says  the  will 
of  the  people  is  being  forged  as  of  wrought  iron 
upon  the  fields  of  war,  and  that  the  days  of  privi- 
lege are  numbered.  Truth  whispers  that  the  bur- 
dens imposed  upon  those  yet  unborn,  not  only  in 
Great  Britain,  but  in  every  belligerent  country  can 
only  be  met  if  they  are  shared  by  one  and  all,  not 
with  any  sense  of  precedence  or  class  distinction  but 
in  a  brotherhood  that  embraces  all  who  labour 
whether  with  hand  or  brain  to  the  common  end. 


172  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

Truth  will  whisper  to  those  who  shrink  before 
strong,  whole-hearted  and  courageous  methods  nec- 
essary to  bring  all  classes  into  line  that  the  needs 
of  the  time  are  paramount  and  that  those  who  will 
not  steer  the  ship  of  State  to  a  safe  harbour  be- 
cause of  the  adverse  winds  and  storming  waves 
that  lie  ahead,  must  yield  to  other  pilots  cast  in 
sterner  mould.  It  will  point  out  that  the  old  days 
of  political  trifling  and  dalliance  are  numbered, 
that  right  and  wrong,  bravery  and  cowardice,  en- 
ergy and  inaction,  whatever  their  future,  can  no 
longer  be  weighed  in  the  unjust  balances  of  the 
party  system.  Truth  will  say  that  our  empire  needs 
the  best  service,  not  only  of  every  man,  but  of  every 
woman,  and  in  consequence,  that  both  must  be  ren- 
dered fit  to  serve  and  allowed  to  express  themselves 
to  the  State's  best  advantage  without  reference  to 
pedigree  or  sex.  It  will  declare  that  an  England 
in  which  the  labours  of  six  men  out  of  seven  are 
valued  at  three  pounds  a  week  or  under,  cannot 
endure  for  the  simple  reason  that  under  the  pres- 
ent social  system,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  really 
capable  people  who  could  deserve  well  of  their 
country  are  doomed  by  poverty  to  ineff^ectiveness. 
Truth  will  say  bluntly  that  the  future  demands 
statesmen  rather  than  politicians,  men  in  their 
prime  rather  than  men  in  their  decline.  It  will 
whisper  of  the  vigorous  democracies  that  the  genius 


TRUTH  WILL  OUT  173 

of  empire  has  brought  into  being,  the  democracies 
that  have  striven  so  noblj'^  to  save  the  empire  and 
must — not  for  reasons  of  sentiment  alone — play 
their  part  in  administering  it.  There  will  not  be 
wanting  the  reminder  that  the  season  in  which 
crises,  military,  social,  political,  can  be  smothered 
in  platitudes  is  past,  not  in  our  time  to  return. 

If  Truth  were  to  proclaim  these  facts  duly 
])ointed  and  applied,  together  with  many  another 
of  like  weight  and  significance  from  the  house-tops, 
the  Defence  of  the  Realm  Act  would  intervene 
promptly,  strongly  and  passionately  on  behalf  of 
Fiction;  but  the  Act  has  limitations.  The  Still 
Small  Voice  evades  the  Act  every  time,  it  speaks 
less  from  the  lips  than  to  the  hearts  of  men.  There 
is  no  humbug  so  highly  placed  as  to  be  able  to 
shut  it  out,  there  is  no  man  or  woman  so  befogged 
or  bewildered  by  the  horror  of  the  hour  that  he  can- 
not hear  the  silences  made  audible.  For  Trnth  is 
not  cast  out  of  life,  it  is  but  despised  and  rejected 
by  the  world's  rulers  and  even  they  cannot  shut 
out  the  voice  that  whispers  through  all  their  waking 
hours,  for  while  many  men  can  deceive  others,  few, 
if  any,  are  permitted  entirely  to  deceive  themselves 
in  times  like  these.  So  many  soft  conventions  have 
fallen  by  the  way,  so  many  of  life's  excuses  and 
subterfuges  have  fallen  into  everlasting  nothing- 
ness.   Before  the  horror-stricken  eyes  of  authority 


174  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

the  world  over,  Truth,  muzzled,  bedraped,  masked, 
and  shrouded  appears  again  like  the  skeleton  at  the 
feast,  like  the  grinning  skull  that  accompanied  the 
Roman  Emperors  on  their  Triumphs  to  remind 
them  that  they  too  were  mortal.  Slowly  yet  with 
deliberation  Truth  is  beginning  to  shed  the  cover- 
ings that  officialdom  had  heaped  in  such  designed 
profusion.  The  day  is  not  far  distant  when  the 
fetters  will  fall  from  the  limbs,  the  shroud  from 
the  dread  face,  and  in  that  hour  not  all  the  Acts 
and  Proscriptions  will  avail  to  frame  a  covering. 
Europe,  bleeding,  sore,  wounded,  poverty-stricken, 
shattered  beyond  recognition,  will  see  Truth  face  to 
face.    And  then ? 


XVIII 

THE  CLAIM  OF  ALL  THE  CHILDREN 

I  HAVE  been  trying  to  look  through  the  clouds  of 
war  to  what  lies  behind.  Quite  resolutely  I  have 
closed  my  ears  to  certain  empty  cries  about  the  com- 
mercial conquest  of  Germany,  about  the  coming  of 
Protection,  about  all  the  panaceas  of  political  and 
other  quacks.  JNIost  of  us  who  take  the  trouble 
to  think  can  trace  these  cries  to  their  source.  I 
have  endeavoured  to  look  to  the  time  when  this  old 
country  of  ours  will  be  faced  by  a  new  set  of  con- 
ditions, by  forces  yet  incalculable  that  war  has 
brought  into  being.  People  have  talked  and  writ- 
ten glibly  about  changes  of  heart,  of  the  frater- 
nising of  capital  and  labour,  of  sin  and  crime  and 
disease  exorcised  by  some  supreme  spirit  of  good 
will,  but  I  have  my  doubts.  "Coelum  non  animum 
mutant,"  wrote  Horace,  two  thousand  years  ago. 
Men  have  always  made  good  resolutions  in  times 
of  stress ;  they  range  from  the  nation's  ideals  voiced 
by  its  spokesmen  down  to  ^the  promise  of  candles 
for  the  shrine  of  some  saint.  The  mind  can  follow 
the  road  that  connects  our  English  House  of  Com- 

175 


176  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

mons  or  the  Russian  home  of  the  Duma  with  the 
church  of  Notre  Dame  de  la  Garde  whereto  the 
men  who  traffic  in  the  mighty  waters  of  the  Gulf 
of  Lyons  pay  with  knick-knacks  for  their  real  or 
imaginary  protection.  I  have  no  faith  in  the  power 
of  good  intentions  to  act  automatically.  When 
this  war  is  over  and  we  are  faced  with  a  victory, 
an  indecisive  result,  or  a  defeat,  the  tendency  of 
our  insularity  will  be  to  interfere  as  little  as  may 
be  with  pre-existing  conditions.  Men  who  serve 
in  high  places  will  be  overwrought ;  you  do  not  carry 
a  part  of  the  burden  of  the  British  Empire  upon 
your  shoulders  without  a  maximum  of  strain.  The 
tendency  will,  I  fear,  be  to  declare  that  the  evil 
of  the  day  is  sufficient,  that  the  nation  must  be  kept 
secure  from  new  ideas.  There  will  be  few  to  make 
excursion  in  search  of  trouble.  Yet  there  can  be 
very  few  students  of  social  progress  who  will  not 
admit  that  the  only  way  in  which  we  can  make 
good  the  losses  of  war,  is  by  turning  to  the  best  pos- 
sible account  the  assets  left  to  us  at  its  conclusion. 
And  the  supreme  asset  of  a  State  is  its  children. 

Let  us  leave  aside  for  the  moment  all  the  other 
burning  social  questions  of  the  time.  They  are  not 
the  less  poignant  because  a  great  patriotic  impulse 
has  kept  so  much  suffering  silent.  The  question 
of  the  future  of  our  great  Empire  is  one  that  must 
be  decided  in  a  large  measure  by  those  who  are  chil- 


THE  CLAIM  OF  ALL  THE  CHILDREN     177 

dren  to-day.  We  have  to  ask  ourselves  what  we 
are  doing  to  prepare  them  for  their  labours,  and 
how  far  such  preparation  can  bear  comparison  with 
that  made  by  the  nations  which  will  be  our  com- 
petitors. We  are  the  trustees  of  the  British  Em- 
pire, Unlimited.  What  manner  of  estate  are  we 
going  to  bequeath  to  our  children? 

Down  to  the  summer  of  1914,  we  had  every 
means  of  doing  well  for  the  generation  that  must 
grasp  the  reins  when  at  Time's  bidding  we  relin- 
quish them.  That  we  had  misused  those  means 
goes  without  saying.  As  far  as  education  goes  it 
was  said  years  ago  of  our  richest  schools  that  a 
vast  sum  of  money  was  expended  on  education,  and 
that  a  beggarly  account  of  empty  brains  was  the 
result.  That  indictment  holds  good  to-day.  The 
education  of  the  children  of  the  wealthy  is  both 
costly  and  ineffective.  Much  that  is  taught  bears 
no  relation  to  the  needs  of  twentieth-century  life. 
ISIiddle  class  education  is  better  without  being  good, 
while  the  State  education  that,  as  far  as  the  poor 
is  concerned,  is  both  obligatory  and  free,  is  worth 
what  it  costs.  Secondary  Education  is  pursued  if 
at  all  under  conditions  of  the  greatest  difficulty. 
Boys  and  girls  too  under  our  present  evil  economic 
conditions  are  turned  into  wage-earners  at  the  earli- 
est possible  moment.  County  Council  classes,  often 
capably  conducted  and  well  within  the  reach  of 


178  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

the  great  majority,  cannot  find  adequate  support 
for  many  reasons.  One  is  that  the  primary  educa- 
tion of  the  poor  does  not  encourage  the  habit  of 
study.  The  ill-fed  children  of  the  slums  look  upon 
school  as  a  necessary  evil,  redeemed  to  a  small  ex- 
tent by  the  gift  of  free  meals,  over  which,  we,  the 
richest  nation  of  the  earth,  haggled  so  long.  When 
the  children  of  the  poor  have  reached  the  standard 
or  the  age  that  sets  them  free,  the  struggle  for 
life  begins  and  finds  them  too  jaded  at  the  end 
of  the  normal  day's  work  to  seek  fresh  instruc- 
tion, even  if  they  have  an  inclination  or  ambition 
to  improve  their  minds.  Untrained,  undisciplined, 
condemned  in  many  instances  to  blind-alley  em- 
ployment, what  better  is  to  be  expected?  Again 
we  are  face  to  face  with  the  demand  for  cheap  la- 
bour, the  labour  that  enriches  the  employer  and 
even  gives  an  illusory  benefit  to  the  State.  Save 
in  the  direction  of  making  laws,  most  of  them  fool- 
ish, and  raising  money,  much  of  it  ill  spent,  the 
State  follows  a  policy  of  laissez  faire.  The  effort  to 
make  primary  education  compulsory  has  seemingly 
left  it  without  the  energy  to  see  that  it  should  also 
be  sound  and  effective.  The  latter-day  squabbles 
between  Church  and  State  in  the  schoolroom  have 
always  been  regarded  as  more  interesting  than  edu- 
cation itself.  Legislators  by  the  score  have  shown 
in  Parliament  that  the  question  of  feeding  hungry 


THE  CLAIM  OF  ALL  THE  CHILDREN     179 

children  so  that  they  may  be  physically  fit  to  learn, 
is  the  only  side  of  education  over  which  they  are 
l)rcpared  to  spend  any  thought,  and  that  in  order 
to  oppose  action.  So  these  things  were  down  to 
the  tune  when  England  went  to  war,  so  they  will 
he  after  England  returns  to  peace  unless  the  great 
body  of  public  opinion  in  the  country  will  realise 
that  no  victory  can  be  enduring  if  countries  anxious 
to  compete  with  us  in  the  future  give  a  genuine 
education  to  their  children  while  w^e  remain  con- 
tent with  a  spurious  one  for  ours.  The  issue  can- 
not be  evaded ;  the  responsibility  cannot  be  shirked. 
French  education,  German,  Dutch,  Danish,  and 
Swiss  are  better  than  ours.  They  take  into  ac- 
count the  needs  of  the  times.  They  are  not  founded 
upon  old  and  obsolete  prejudices.  The  technical 
side  of  educational  needs  is  fairly  and  fully  met. 
The  State  equipment  is  better.  The  teachers  know 
that  there  are  people  in  the  world  who  do  not  speak 
English,  and  that  several  European  languages  not 
only  have  a  claim  to  consideration,  but  must  be 
taught  by  competent  masters ;  that  is  to  say,  by  men 
and  women  with  a  liberal  education  born  in  the 
land  whose  language  they  teach.  Travelling  schol- 
arships should  be  the  first  reward  of  those  who  ex- 
cel at  school.  The  incentive  would  be  immense, 
and  the  contribution  to  the  forces  of  peace  im- 
measurable. 


180  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

Even  our  cousins  across  the  Atlantic,  who  have 
made  their  educational  system  a  living  thing,  have 
failed  to  teach  us.  Andrew  Carnegie,  remember- 
ing the  land  of  his  birth,  has  liberally  endowed  Scot- 
tish University  Education  with  the  gold  of  Pitts- 
burg. Harvard,  Yale,  Princeton,  and  other  Amer- 
ican colleges  are  an  example  to  the  world,  in  Can- 
ada the  lesson  has  been  learned,  in  Toronto,  Mon- 
treal and  elsewhere,  and  will  soon  be  fully  applied. 
But  here  in  England  those  who  cannot  go  to  Ox- 
ford or  Cambridge  will  find  that,  for  the  most  part, 
they  must  be  external  students  in  pursuit  of  the 
higher  education,  with  little  of  the  joyous  inter- 
course that  kindles  ambitions  and  ideals.  We  look 
a  little  askance  at  education.  For  the  man  in  the 
street  the  really  great  representatives  of  Cam  and 
Isis  are  those  who  can  row  from  Putney  to  Mort- 
lake  in  the  early  spring,  and  those  who  can  shine 
at  the  cricket  ground  in  Marylebone  about  mid- 
summer. Scholarship  is  something  in  the  nature 
of  a  harmless  eccentricity,  calling  less  for  rebuke 
than  for  derision.  For  this  view-point  our  hope- 
less system  of  primary  education  is  responsible. 
To  be  effective  in  this  country  education  must  be 
revised  to  meet  the  times  we  live  in,  made  popular 
and  finally  democratised.  As  I  write  we  are  waging 
war  at  the  price  of  some  four  or  five  million  pounds 
a  day.    We  must  wage  peace  with  as  fine  a  dis- 


THE  CLAIM  OF  ALL  THE  CHILDREN    181 

regard  for  inevitable  expenditure.  The  cost  of 
one  week's  war  will  maintain  an  entirely  different 
system  of  national  education  for  a  year.  I  would 
like  to  deal  in  brief  broad  outline  with  what  might 
be  attempted. 

It  is  only  necessary  to  concede  in  the  first  in- 
stance that  a  sane  Government  recognises  the  para- 
mount claims  of  the  children,  the  terrible  loss  of 
much  of  the  country's  best  blood,  and  the  conse- 
(^uent  need  of  bringing  what  is  left  to  us  to  the 
highest  pitch  of  public  utility.  These  premises 
should  surely  stand  beyond  controversy.  Why 
should  not  every  slum  child  have  its  share  of  pub- 
lic-school life  free  of  all  charge?  If  we  have  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  this  is  the  best  thing  for 
the  future  of  the  country,  why  should  the  majority 
of  the  little  ones  be  left  out?  Does  anybody  hold 
that  we  do  not  require  the  best  that  all  the  chil- 
dren can  do  for  England?  To  those  who  suggest 
that  such  a  simple  matter  is  revolutionary,  or  that 
it  will  cost  too  much,  one  reply  is  that  our  children 
are  our  greatest  national  asset.  Upon  our  capacity 
to  rear  them  well  and  wisely  and  to  educate  them 
to  the  needs  of  the  time,  the  whole  future  of  the 
British  Empire  depends.  There  is  really  nothing 
revolutionary  about  the  proposal,  for,  if  you  come 
to  think  of  it,  we  give  free  education  and  even  free 
meals,  and  the  most  hardened  Conservative  will 


182  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

acknowledge  freely  enough  that  the  slum  is  not  a 
good  training  ground  for  the  rising  generation. 
You  cannot  clear  slums  away  in  a  hurry.  The 
owners  of  such  places  are  regarded  if  not  with  af- 
fection, at  least  with  respect  by  the  law  and  the 
law  makers,  but  you  can  run  up  boarding  establish- 
ments that  will  be  infinitely  superior  to  slums,  and 
you  can  gather  within  them  the  outcasts  of  the  capi- 
talistic system  for  proper  feeding,  clothing,  edu- 
cation, and  training.  If  children  go  wrong  they 
are  sent  to  special  schools.  All  that  is  necessary 
is  that  instead  of  the  children  going  wrong,  the 
grown-ups  shall  go  right,  that  they  shall  recognise 
how  little  their  politics,  prejudices  and  preconcep- 
tions matter  by  the  side  of  one  child's  welfare.  I 
go  as  far  as  to  declare  that  it  is  the  bounden  duty 
of  the  State  to  make  its  gift  of  education  effec- 
tive, that  in  making  education  compulsory  it  rec- 
ognised certain  paramount  duties  that  remain  ful- 
filled only  in  the  letter,  and  not  in  the  spirit.  One 
does  not  advocate  change,  however  beneficial,  for 
the  mere  sake  of  a  nobler  and  wider  life,  such  pleas 
do  not  gain  prompt  acceptance.  Rather  let  it  be 
stated  quite  frankly  that,  unless  we  turn  the  best 
aptitudes  and  capacities  of  the  rising  generation 
to  the  fullest  account,  we  camiot  hope  to  maintain 
our  position  in  the  face  of  competition.  As  a  na- 
tion we  handicap  ourselves  lamentably  when  we  en- 


THE  CLAIM  OF  ALL  THE  CHH^DREN    183 

deavoiir  to  hold  our  own  in  the  world  with  no  more 
than  a  small  part  of  our  national  assets  realised 
or  realisable.  Children  are  our  assets,  and  between 
the  infant  mortality  on  the  one  hand,  blind  product 
of  ignorance,  poverty,  and  apathy,  and  indifferent 
education  on  the  other  hand,  we  stand  a  very  bad 
chance  in  the  battle  for  supremacy.  If  we  would 
increase,  preserve,  and  train  child  life  we  could  look 
to  the  future  without  misgiving. 

Edmund  Burke,  who  will  not  be  found  to  have 
given  many  hostages  to  socialism,  declared  that  the 
citizens  of  a  State  are  a  partnership,  that  every 
member  of  such  partnership  has  a  right  to  a  fair 
portion  of  all  that  society  with  all  its  combinations 
of  skill  and  force  can  do  in  his  favour,  and  that 
he  has  a  right  to  the  fruits  of  his  o\mi  industry 
and  the  improvement  of  his  own  offspring.  Let 
us  be  content  to  leave  the  case  as  Burke  stated  it 
in  the  time  of  George  III.,  it  will  be  seen  that  we 
have  not  yet  gained  for  the  average  man  the  min- 
ima that  the  most  eloquent  statesman  of  his  time 
prescribed.  It  is  also  clear  that  this  claim  for  a 
full  and  free  education  is  not  the  claim  for  charity, 
but  the  claim  for  a  right  that  should  be  deemed 
inalienable.  The  grant  of  this  right  enriches  while 
appearing  to  impoverish  the  State,  and  a  step  that 
some  will  deem  socialistic  and  others  revolutionary 
is  fairly  defined  as  common-sense  procedure.    We 


184  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

have  at  last  reached  the  stage  of  agreeing  that  child 
life  must  be  increased,  preserved,  and  cultivated 
to  the  best  ends,  but  there  is  a  fatal  inclination  in 
this  country  to  regard  the  theoretical  acceptance  of 
a  principle  as  the  equivalent  of  its  complete  prac- 
tical development.  When  you  discuss  the  whole 
vital  question  with  sensible  people  they  prove,  al- 
most without  exception,  in  accord,  but  as  soon  as 
you  say,  "therefore  let  us  endow  maternity,  pass 
Pure  Milk  Bills,  protect  the  mother  from  wr^ong- 
ful  labour  before  and  after  confinement,  and  the 
child  from  mal-nutrition,  educate  the  child  when 
it  is  old  enough  to  be  educated,  submit  it  to  rea- 
sonable discipline  and.  prepare  it  physically, 
morally,  and  mentally  to  fill  the  place  for  which  it 
is  best  fitted  in  the  workshop  of  the  world/'  the 
theorists  are  unable  to  follow.  Some  constitutional 
timidity  holds  them.  They  will  not  gallop  across 
country  to  reach  their  goal,  fences  and  ditches 
frighten  them,  and  all  gates  must  be  unfastened. 
It  is  well  for  those  of  us  whose  ambitions  for  Eng- 
land are  inexhaustible,  and  who  watch  the  shadow 
on  Life's  Dial  moving  inexorably  towards  the  sun- 
set that  we  dare  not  despair  of  humanity.  The  pen, 
however  ill  we  may  wield  it,  gives  us  courage.  We 
know  that  when  our  views  are  issued  broadcast  they 
resemble  the  seed  in  the  Parable  of  the  Sower,  and 
that  some  worker  who  in  days  yet  unborn  will  lead 


THE  CLAIM  OF  ALT.  THE  CHn.DREN    185 

the  children  of  the  poor  to  their  safe  harbour  out 
of  the  troubled  Maters  on  which  their  helpless  lives 
are  tossed,  will  have  gathered  a  part  of  his  inspira- 
tion and  force  from  the  thoughts  of  those  who  have 
gone  before. 

What  is  it  that  taints  our  physical  bravery  as 
a  nation  with  so  much  moral  cowardice?  Why  is 
it  that  coiHitless  thousands  will  face  shot  and  shell 
and  wounds  horrible  beyond  imagining  with  quiet 
heroism,  and  will  yet  shrink  from  the  display  of 
moral  courage  required  to  tell  their  rulers  that, 
until  the  poorest  child  of  England  has  its  rights 
and  its  chance,  thej'^  have  failed  in  their  duty,  and 
that  they  must  put  the  national  house  in  order? 
I  would  wager  that  a  majority,  a  large  majority  of 
both  Houses  of  Parliament  would  be  prepared  to 
admit  in  private  conversation  all  the  claims  I  have 
put  forward  on  behalf  of  the  little  ones,  and  that 
they  would  in  public  find  a  score  of  excuses  for  not 
pressing  them.  The  most  frequent  excuse  will  of 
course  be  that  after  this  war  we  shall  lack  the 
means.  But  I  protest  that  whatever  the  date  of 
peace,  if  it  be  a  peace  that  meets  our  hopes,  we 
shall  be  in  a  state  in  which  we  could  find  the  means 
for  at  least  another  year  of  war  if  need  be.  Who 
will  deny  that  it  is  better  to  create,  cherish,  and 
equip  life  than  to  devote  our  vast  resources  to  its 
destruction?    Equality,  liberty,  and  fraternity  are 


186  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

the  first-fruits  of  liberal  education,  the  fine  flower 
of  progress.  The  war  found  our  wealth  accumu- 
lating and  our  people  deteriorating,  so  slowly  to 
be  sure  that  they  were  able  to  pull  themselves  to- 
gether and  appeal  with  certainty  to  the  favourable 
verdict  of  world  history,  but  yet  deteriorating. 
Slums,  prostitution,  crime,  insanity,  drink,  irre- 
sponsible wealth,  all  these  evils  were  beginning  to 
fester  in  the  body  politic,  and  war  has  applied  the 
surgeon's  knife  to  the  open  sore.  Is  peace  to  see 
it  extirpated  or  allowed  to  grow  again?  I  think 
in  all  honesty  and  sincerity  that  our  treatment  of 
the  children  will  decide.  If  we  will  learn  from 
our  neighbours  on  the  continent  and  our  kinsmen 
across  the  Atlantic  we  may  renew  our  strength. 
We  may  even  justify  the  sacrifice  of  those  who  by 
reason  of  their  love  of  England  will  never  return 
to  us. 

There  is  another  and  a  sacred  ground  for  this 
appeal.  Let  us  remember  the  nameless  dead,  those 
whose  heroism  is  expressed  in  part  of  a  crowded 
line  of  small  print,  who  had  nothing  but  their  lives 
to  offer  to  their  country,  who  had  no  chance  in  life 
and  who  when  the  bands  of  the  body  were  breaking 
gave  their  last  anxious  thoughts  to  little  ones 
doomed  under  our  harsh  system  of  social  life  to 
drift  where  and  how  they  can.  Who  among  those 
they  died  to  leave  in  security  and  a  sufficiency  of 


THE  CLAIM  OF  ALL  THE  CHILDREN    187 

the  world's  goods  would  come  forward  and  say, 
"In  spite  of  all  these  dead  men  did  for  me  I  will 
oppose  a  measure  that  will  give  their  children  use- 
ful and  honourable  lives,  because  what  is  left  to 
me  of  life  will  be  passed  without  some  luxuries  I 
have  enjoyed  hitherto?"  I  venture  to  say  there 
are  none  who  would  put  this  sentiment  in  words. 
Yet  there  are  thousands,  tens  of  thousands  whose 
deeds  will  say  it  for  them,  not  because  they  are 
utterly  selfish,  callous,  or  hard-hearted,  but  be- 
cause they  lack  the  saving  grace  of  imagination. 
The  most  of  the  evil  that  disfigures  the  earth  is  due 
to  this  inability  to  see  beyond  our  own  needs.  In 
the  labour,  the  upheaval,  the  expense  of  a  move- 
ment needed  to  equip  the  generation  that  will  so 
soon  succeed  our  own,  we  overlook  the  salient  truth 
that  it  is  no  more  than  the  fulfilment  of  a  sol- 
emn duty,  a  pledge  that  binds  us  to  the  dead 
though  it  was  never  given.  For  who  will  suggest 
that  the  poor  men,  the  bulk  of  those  who  fought 
and  died  for  England,  faced  their  fate  to  main- 
tain the  slum  and  the  gin  palace  and  the  labour  of 
the  poor  prostitute  who  sells  her  body  that  she 
may  eat  to  live,  or  drink  to  forget  how  she  is  liv- 
ing? Surely  they  died  for  the  faith  that  was  in 
them,  with  some  dim  fore-knowledge  of  happier 
days  for  those  they  left  behind.  We  are  the  ex- 
ecutors of  their  un^Titten  testament.     If,  as  so 


188  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

many  believe,  there  is  some  form  of  consciousness 
in  the  unknown  world  of  which  they  are  the  sud- 
den denizens,  will  they  not  be  looking  even  now 
to  see  if  we  whose  debt  is  so  great  have  determined 
to  pay  it?  And  what  better  faith  can  we  keep 
than  by  giving  to  the  lives  they  have  left  behind 
the  simple  rights  that  were  denied  to  them  ?  Every 
rich  man,  every  member  of  the  comfortable  classes 
claims  these  benefits  for  his  children,  and  if  the 
war  has  given  birth  to  a  true  spirit  of  brotherhood, 
the  children  of  the  poor  cannot  be  forgotten.  They 
lack  the  means,  we  have  them.  From  this  simple 
truth  and  the  consequent,  inexorable  duty  there  is 
no  escape  with  a  clean  conscience. 


XIX 

THE   PRUSSIAN   IN   OUR   MIDST 

War  throws  a  blinding  light  upon  the  strength 
and  the  weakness  of  nations,  and  in  England  we 
may  claim  that  we  have  faced  the  light  without  any 
revelations  of  which  we  need  feel  ashamed.  Our 
mistakes  have  been  rather  of  temperament  than 
character,  and  whether  in  mustering  our  millions  on 
the  voluntary  system  or  surrendering  our  hard-won 
liberties  to  an  authority  that  has  shown  no  sign 
of  suffering  from  wisdom  in  excess,  or  giving  fully 
and  freely  of  our  resources  to  the  national  cause, 
we  may  claim  to  have  shown  in  our  collective  ca- 
pacity a  generous  response  to  the  most  varied  and 
unexpected  demands.  Incidentally  we  have  dis- 
covered in  our  midst  a  body  of  men,  happily  small 
in  number,  and  not  too  significant  in  position,  who 
would  fain  embody  in  our  national  life  the  worst 
vices  that  we  are  said  to  be  fighting  in  the  one 
foe  that  counts.  These  men,  whose  political  sa- 
gacity exists  in  inverse  ratio  to  their  prejudices, 
are   ever   prompting  the  worst  elements   in   our 

189 


190  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

rulers  and  threatening  and  intriguing  against  the 
others. 

To  them  war  is  no  frightful  necessity  imposed 
upon  a  free  and  peaceful  people,  but  a  providen- 
tial opportunity  for  taking  occasion  by  the  hand; 
the  voice  is  the  voice  of  Prussia,  but  the  hands 
are  English  hands. 

Our  Prussians  have  always  been  in  evidence,  but, 
while  the  government  of  the  empire  was  trusted 
to  their  friends,  they  were  content  to  be  quietly 
active.  It  is  now  nearly  ten  years  since  a  Liberal 
Government  came  into  power,  and  with  the  advent 
of  Radical  legislation  our  Prussians — they  call 
them  Tories  over  here — became  active. 

When  taxation  threatened  their  superfluous 
wealth,  they  called  heaven  and  earth  to  witness 
that  such  an  outrage  had  no  sanction.  When  the 
House  of  Lords,  long  the  supreme  force  of  obstruc- 
tion, was  threatened  they  grew  frantic,  and  at  many 
a  well-spread  board  declared  themselves  ready  to 
dine — I  mean  die — in  the  last  ditch  before  sub- 
mitting to  the  indignity  of  democratic  government. 

When  Home  Rule  was  on  the  tapis  they  declared 
for  revolution  and  civil  war,  and  it  needed  Arma- 
geddon to  burst  the  bladder  of  Sir  Edward  Car- 
son's threats.  In  justice  be  it  said  that  when  the 
tocsin  sounded  the  Tories  responded  to  the  nation's 
need,  and  forgot  for  a  time  their  ineffective  selves. 


THE  PRUSSIAN  IN  OUR  MIDST  191 

But  as  soon  as  the  gravity  of  the  task  was  re- 
vealed they  decided  that  tlie  authorities  were  use- 
less without  their  judgment  in  aid.  Cabal  suc- 
ceeded criticism,  plots  of  exquisite  silliness  were 
hatched,  matched,  and  dispatched.  Then  came  the 
call  for  more  soldiers,  and  our  Prussians  turned 
Conscriptionists. 

The  suggestion  that  conscription  of  men  should 
be  associated  with  conscription  of  wealth  was  dis- 
missed as  an  impertinence,  it  sufficed  if  all  that 
others  possess  were  sacrificed  for  the  State.  Our 
Prussians  talked  incessantly  of  men  and  duty,  but 
where  finance  was  concerned  they  were  content  to 
warn  the  worker  not  to  squander  his  extra  wages 
earned  by  unremitting  labour  during  a  week  seven 
days  long.  They  saw  with  clear  vision  the  in- 
iquity of  depriving  the  capitalist  of  half  the  wealth 
he  is  amassing  as  a  result  of  the  bloodiest  war  in 
history,  and  have  protested  almost  in  unison  against 
the  decree.  They  forgot  with  amazing  ease  that 
conscription  is  the  force  that  has  set  the  Prussian 
Jack-boot  above  all  law  human  and  divine;  they 
clamoured  for  it  here,  doubtless  with  an  eye  upon 
the  possibilities  of  coercing  in  days  to  come  a  pro- 
letariat of  toilers  forced  to  live  under  military  law 
in  time  of  peace.  Disguised  as  patriots  tliey  thun- 
dered from  a  hundred  platforms,  they  thumped 
a  thousand  tubs,  while  their  hirelings  in  the  Press 


192  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

wrote  stodgily  in  admiration  and  support,  point- 
ing out  that  certain  hard- jawed,  soulless  politi- 
cians would  alone  avail  to  save  England  from  it- 
self. As  though  England  would  endure  to-day  the 
undiluted  political  opinions  of  a  Carson,  a  Milner, 
a  Halsbury,  or  a  Walter  Long.  Excellent  men, 
no  doubt,  but  never  in  their  lives  less  than  half  a 
century  behind  the  times. 

Politicians  and  papers  were  aided  by  the  truth 
that  even  the  voluntary  system  has  its  flaws  and 
hardships,  its  inequalities  and  petty  tyrannies,  and 
the  Prussian  remedy  for  the  whip  of  voluntary  ser- 
vice is  the  scorpion  of  conscription. 

Those  who  do  not  agree  with  our  Prussians  are 
traitors  to  the  height,  although  if  our  Prussians  are 
patriots  Dr.  Johnson's  definition  of  patriotism  be- 
comes dangerously  true. 

The  question  of  peace  discussion  has  been  the 
latest  consideration  of  these  gentry.  Personally 
I  have  no  use  for  peace  until  we  have  won  our 
victory  or  suffered  our  defeat.  I  believe  we  shall 
win,  and  that  our  first  duties  as  victors  will  be  to 
take  whatever  steps  are  needed  to  give  peace  per- 
manence. 

But  I  cannot  follow  our  Prussians  over  one 
yard  of  their  mile-long  way.  They  would  impose 
the  methods  of  Berlin  and  Vienna  upon  all  who 
dare  to  have  opinions  of  their  own,  they  would 


THE  PRUSSIAN  IN  OUR  MIDST  193 

repress  individuality,  they  would  out  Ilerod  the 
Herods  of  the  censorship  who  daily  murder  so  much 
childishness,  they  would  in  fact  reduce  free  men 
to  the  level  of  the  citizens  who  serve  their  rulers 
for  "cannon  fodder." 

In  one  of  the  reactionary  dailies  written  by  To- 
ries for  Tories  I  have  been  reading  with  infinite 
disgust  a  tribute  of  admiration  to  the  "Stern  INIeth- 
ods"  of  the  Central  Empires  in  dealing  with  "War 
Cranks,"  i.e.  with  people  whose  sense  of  what  they, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  believe  to  be  truth  is  so  strong 
that  they  will  sacrifice  position,  even  life,  to  tell 
the  truth  when  they  see  it.  "Hungarians,"  writes 
our  Prussian,  "who  were  only  suspected  of  not 
approving  of  the  war  were  interned  or  publicly 
shot."  Such  a  policy  has  more  to  justify  it  "than 
have  the  liberties  which  are  accorded  to  certain 
sects  who  with  their  ideas  form  an  insignificant,  and 
almost  negligible  minority."  These  sentiments  are 
even  worse  than  the  English  used  to  express  them. 
One  Hungarian  publicist,  M.  Pazmaudy,  aged 
sixty-nine,  went  to  prison  for  three  months  for 
writing  an  unpublished  letter  to  a  newspaper  in 
which  he  denounced  the  war  as  wholesale  murder. 
A  teacher  who  pointed  out  to  his  class  that  war 
is  the  fruit  of  rulers'  jealousy  rather  than  of  the 
people's  animosities,  a  statement  that  is  probably 
true  of  nine-tenths  of  the  war  recorded  by  his- 


194  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

tory,  was  condemned  to  three  years'  hard  labour. 
Our  anonymous  Prussian  rejoices  in  these  barbari- 
ties, and  a  paper  supposed  to  represent  the  edu- 
cated classes  of  England  is  not  ashamed  to  print 
this  revelation  of  an  unsound  or  distorted  mind. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  war,  Bernard  Shaw 
reminded  us  that  we,  too,  have  our  Junkers,  and 
his  statement  has  been  proved  up  to  the  hilt.  Our 
soldiers  and  sailors  are  fighting  the  Prussians 
abroad,  and  it  is  the  duty  of  those  of  us  who  can- 
not help  beyond  England's  boundaries,  to  fight 
the  Prussians  at  home,  for  it  is  abundantly  clear 
that  we  have  them  in  our  midst,  those  who  are 
working  night  and  day  to  give  us  Militarism,  Ab- 
solutism, and  every  form  of  Central  European  slav- 
ery under  another  name.  They  desire  an  Eng- 
land of  conscript  workmen,  they  seek  the  destruc- 
tion of  Trade  Unionism,  and  the  abolition  of  so- 
cialism, though  it  is  only  by  adopting  that  dread 
creed  that  the  Government  contrived  to  save  our 
credit  and  to  feed  us.  They  wish  to  destroy  the 
German  militarism,  and  what  it  stands  for,  but 
only  to  take  over  the  whole  business,  lock,  stock, 
and  barrel  as  a  going  concern.  The  truth  is  that 
the  Tories  can  no  more  change  their  skin  than 
the  leopard  his  spots. 

It  is  to  them  the  ideal,  merely  the  ideal,  in  the 
wrong  hands.    They  see  beyond  the  horizon  of  war 


THE  PRUSSIAN  IN  OUR  MIDST  195 

tlie  dawning  of  a  democratic  era  that  shall  destroy 
privilege,  and  make  our  national  freedom  greater 
than  it  has  ever  been,  and  the  prospect  is  more 
bitter  to  them  than  defeat.  So  while  our  men, 
so  recently  civilians,  are  proving  the  strength  and 
resources  of  comparative  freedom — what  has  been 
done  is  as  little  with  what  still  remains  to  be  done 
— our  Prussians  are  putting  forward  all  manner 
of  chains  for  unfettered  limbs,  and  are  declaring 
that  without  them  nothing  can  save  the  Empire. 
It  is  pleasant  to  reflect  that  after  this  war  comes 
to  its  appointed  close  the  vigorous  democracies  of 
Canada  and  Australia  that  have  followed  the 
United  States  along  the  road  of  political  freedom 
will  be  finding  representatives  at  the  Council  Board 
of  Empire,  and  that  they  will  be  alert  and  vig- 
orous to  put  an  end  to  the  machinations  of  our 
Prussians  whose  attack  upon  liberty  will  not  read- 
ily be  forgotten.  When  we  attempt  to  measure 
the  sacrifices  that  have  been  made  in  freedom's 
name  since  August,  1914,  when  we  remember  the 
spirit  that  has  led  men  contentedly  into  the  jaws 
of  death,  when  we  understand  what  our  fighters 
have  fought  for,  there  is  an  indescribable  sense 
of  loathing  for  the  men  who,  secure  in  England, 
are  plotting  to  transfer  Prussian  principles  across 
the  North  Sea.    Their  failure  to  achieve  anything 


196  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

commensurate  with  the  villainy  of  the  attempt  is 
neither  palliation  nor  excuse. 

Every  one  who  has  studied  social  conditions 
knows  that  our  national  ability  to  pit  the  unpre- 
pared British  Empire  against  Germany  armed  to 
the  teeth,  has  been  due  to  the  fact  that  our  Empire 
holds  millions  who  believe  from  the  bottom  of  their 
hearts  that  it  is  worth  living  in  and  dying  for. 
What  would  the  Prussians  make  of  our  Empire  if 
they  were  allowed  to  direct  it?  A  happy  hunting- 
ground  for  Junkers  and  a  hell  upon  Earth  for 
free  men  is  the  very  best  that  they  could  accomplish. 

Political  insight,  democratic  foresight,  prevision  of 
the  inevitable  march  of  events,  all  these  gifts  are  de- 
nied them.  They  have  no  sympathy  with  any  freedom 
that  could  exist  beyond  the  realms  of  the  privileged 
classes,  they  are  too  blind  to  see  the  writing  on  the 
wall  that  tells  them  they  have  been  found  wanting. 

This  war  has  witnessed  plenty  of  mistakes,  some 
trivial,  some  serious;  it  has  witnessed  the  birth  of 
a  certain  number  of  oppressive  and  retrograde 
measures,  and  the  death  of  national  liberties  of 
which  we  look  with  hope,  even  with  certainty  for 
the  joyful  resurrection. 

Whatever  has  been  bad,  retrograde,  or  danger- 
ous to  democracy  has  won  the  unstinted  approval 
of  our  Prussians;  every  other  act  of  our  rulers 
they  have  condemned. 


XX 

THE  GROTTN-UP   GIRLS  OF  ENGLAND 

Before  the  war,  I  heard  some  shrewd  feminists 
say  that  the  frivolity  associated  with  the  life  of 
women  at  the  time  when  they  have  ceased  to  be 
girls  and  have  "come  out,"  is  a  matter  of  environ- 
ment rather  than  choice.  They  went  so  far  as  to 
assert  that  if  a  worthier  goal  were  offered,  a  ma- 
jority would  seek  it  without  a  m.oment's  hesitation. 
For  all  my  sympathy  with  feminism,  despite  my 
heartfelt  conviction  that  man  needs  woman's  help 
in  the  task  of  administering  the  world  that  lies  be- 
yond the  home,  I  had  doubts,  grave  doubts.  I 
thought  that  those  who  said  these  things  had  gone 
a  little  beyond  their  brief,  and  I  remembered  the 
French  aphorism,  "la  jeimesse  na  quun  jour."  It 
seemed  to  me  that  an  innate  knowledge  of  the  time- 
limit  was  the  foundation  of  frivolity,  and  here,  per- 
haps, I  was  looking  back  thirty  years  or  more  to 
the  radiant  season  of  my  own  debute  and  was  re- 
membering how  the  girls  who  became  matrons  were 
expected  to  play  the  rest  of  their  part  in  the  life 
symphony  on  muted  strings.     True  it  is  that  I 

197 


198  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

helped  to  post-date  the  passing  of  the  girl  and  the 
coming  of  the  matron,  but  in  those  feverish  times 
we  all  thought  that  the  race  was  to  the  swift. 

It  may  be  that  this  conviction  coloured  my  views ; 
I  believed  that  for  the  vast  majority  of  young  girls 
with  prospects  of  a  good  time,  there  would  be  no 
pleasure  in  serious  endeavour  of  any  kind:  that 
a  sense  of  responsibility  could  not  precede  the 
State  recognition  of  women  and  a  sweeping  meas- 
ure of  educational  reform.  As  recently  as  the  sum- 
mer season  of  1914,  I  found  the  new  players  fever- 
ishly excited  by  the  old,  old  game,  and  pleasure 
instead  of  losing  its  savour  seemed  to  have  wid- 
ened its  boundaries  and  assumed  shapes  more  fan- 
tastic than  ever.  I  heard  girls  who  were  standing 
on  the  threshold  of  their  career  prattling  of  the 
joys  to  come  as  though  life  did  not  compass  within 
its  horizon  one  solitary  sorrow  or  disappointment. 
Women  of  experience  are,  I  think,  stirred  by  these 
enthusiasms  in  their  sisters  or  daughters,  or  young 
friends:  they  have  learned  a  part  of  life's  lesson, 
and  know  glad  memories  for  an  inalienable  posses- 
sion. It  follows  that  they  rejoice  to  see  those  who 
are  near  and  dear  to  them  treading  the  primrose 
path  in  the  spring  of  their  years,  realising  that 
v/hen  they  look  over  the  old  road  in  the  autumn 
days,  their  memory  will  help  to  gladden  it  with 
even  fairer  blossoms.     If  we  know  youth  for  the 


THE  GROWN-UP  GIRLS  OF  ENGLAND        199 

season  of  mental  intoxication,  we  are  not  the  less 
grateful  to  the  gods  who  grant  it  to  one  and  all, 
and  if  we  are  quite  honest  with  ourselves  we  have 
been  rather  a  little  sorry  for  the  girls  who  are  seri- 
ous before  their  time.  But,  while  so  many  happy 
children,  for  after  all  they  were  little  more,  were 
bringing  their  healthy  appetite  to  the  banquet  of 
life,  "dawn  was  at  hand  to  strike  the  loud  feast 
dumb." 

The  effect  of  the  upheaval  upon  the  girls  who 
had  been  presented  in  1914,  or  would  in  the  ordi- 
nary course  of  events  have  made  their  debut  since, 
has  been  startling,  and  it  has  taught  me  that  not 
only  are  the  working  classes  sound  at  the  core — 
I  never  doubted  this — but  the  leisured  classes  are 
in  no  whit  inferior.  Only  an  insignificant  minority 
pursue  pleasure  at  any  price,  and  find  in  the  hor- 
rors of  our  time  a  medium  for  publicity  or  dissi- 
pation. Over  the  not  inconsiderable  circle  that  I 
have  the  opportunity  of  observing  there  came,  in 
the  vast  majority  of  cases,  a  startling  change.  The 
opportunities  for  frivolity  under  the  rose  were  ac- 
cepted only  by  a  few  who  are  constitutionally  and 
irretrievably  decadent,  or  actually  vicious.  The 
others  passed  pleasure  by,  sought  duty  wherever 
it  was  to  be  found,  and  became  supremely  happy 
in  its  pursuit.  They  taught  me  to  realise  that  my 
feminist  friends  were  right,  and  that  environment 


200  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

which  could  have  moulded  their  plastic  natures  in 
one  mould,  had  no  trouble  in  moulding  them  in  an- 
other. 

To  do  full  justice  to  the  fortunately  circum- 
stanced girls  of  England,  for  I  take  it  that  what 
is  true  of  London  and  many  country  homes  will 
apply  elsewhere,  it  is  necessary  to  remember  that 
they  have  known  less  of  the  horrors  of  war  than 
their  sisters  of  almost  all  belligerent  countries. 
Some,  very  few,  have  heard  one  or  two  bombs 
dropped  from  air-ships,  the  rest  have  seen  no  more 
than  the  wounded  men  who  are  sufficiently  well  to 
be  brought  over  to  England.  They  cannot  even 
have  visualised  the  full  tragedy  of  the  struggle  as 
French  and  Belgian  girls  must  have  done,  and, 
above  all,  they  are  seldom  imaginative,  but  just  as 
they  were  prepared  less  than  two  years  ago  to  en- 
joy as  good  a  time  as  life  could  afford,  they  are 
now  committed  to  the  hardest  tasks  within  their 
competence.  What  they  have  lost  in  pleasure,  they 
have  gained  in  self-respect,  and  a  sense  of  true  citi- 
zenship; above  all,  they  realise  that  they  are  of 
signal  use  to  the  State  in  the  hour  of  its  exceed- 
ing great  need.  Part  of  the  role  so  long  denied  to 
them  they  have  assumed,  not  only  without  chal- 
lenge, but  with  acclamation. 

They  have  one  additional  advantage  in  their  new 
sphere :  they  have  never  known  the  pursuits  of  nor- 


THE  GROWN-UP  GIRLS  OF  ENGLAND        201 

mal  times.  \\TiiIe  the  doors  of  the  ball-room  and 
all  that  lies  beyond  were  still  shut,  the  doors  of  the 
Temjjie  of  Janus  were  torn  asunder.  They  have 
no  regrets,  they  do  not  miss  the  flavour  of  what 
they  have  never  tasted.  Life  is  so  full  for  them 
that  if  pleasure  were  within  their  grasp  they  would 
lack  the  leisure  as  well  as  the  inclination  to  grasp 
it.  The  example  of  fathers,  brothers,  boy  friends, 
is  an  unending  stimulus;  all  those  they  love  best 
are  looking  to  them  with  a  gratitude  or  admiration 
that  no  pursuit  of  pleasure  could  have  evoked. 
They  have  realised  the  high  tension  of  the  hour, 
they  have  risen  silently  and  unostentatiously  to  the 
heights.  Such  tragedy  as  has  come  into  their  lives 
— and  the  mourning  that  so  many  wear  is  eloquent 
beyond  all  speech — has  increased  rather  than 
diminished  their  labours ;  it  has  brought  them  nearer 
to  the  actuality  of  things.  Where  one  hoped  that 
all  would  gather  roses  many  have  gathered  rue, 
but  they  have  learned  to  know  it  by  the  older  name, 
herb-of-grace.  They  wear  it  as  they  work,  and 
it  has  become  one  of  the  symbols  of  the  bond  that 
binds  those  who  serve  with  those  who  suffer. 

I  have  seen  the  girls  of  whom  I  write  labouring 
with  deft  yet  unaccustomed  hands  in  the  canteens, 
undertaking  in  the  hospitals  the  menial  work  that 
falls  to  those  who  are  yet  untrained,  giving  to  pain 
longer  hours  than  they  would  have  given  to  pleas- 


202  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

ure  in  happy  times.  They  bring  to  their  tasks  the 
subtle  indefinite  charm  that  is  the  gift  of  their 
hour  and  was  intended  for  a  setting  so  different. 
Is  it  a  part  of  their  reward  that  their  fives  should 
not  lack  a  generous  gift  of  high  romance?  I  can- 
not recall  in  any  season  over  which  my  memory 
has  control  so  many  engagements  and  marriages 
as  there  have  been  of  late.  The  old  huckstering 
conditions  would  seem  to  have  passed,  the  girls  are 
no  longer  weighing  chances,  the  men  are  no  longer 
calculating  coldly.  Each  sees  the  other  at  best. 
The  girl  knows  that  the  lad  who  has  given  all  and 
risked  all  for  his  country  must  be  sound  at  heart, 
and  that  his  scars  are  honourable;  the  young  man 
knows  that  he  cannot  go  wrong  in  choosing  a  girl 
who  has  left  pleasure  for  duty,  who  has  found  high 
ideals  and  pursues  them.  These  unions  coming 
about  in  hours  of  deepest  uncertainty,  when  the 
bride  of  one  month  may  be  the  widow  of  the  next, 
are  calculated  to  bring  out  what  is  best  in  both, 
for  the  natural  affection  is  leavened  by  mutual  re- 
spect. I  have  heard  worldly  minded  parents  grieve, 
some  have  brought  their  tales  of  woe  to  my  utterly 
unsympathetic  ear;  I  rejoice  in  these  marriages, 
and  believe  they  are  of  happiest  augury  for  the 
State.  Surely  those  who  wed  under  these  condi- 
tions may  hope  to  live  on  the  high  plane  of  ideal- 
ism longer  than  those  whose  unions  have  been  die- 


THE  GROWN-UP  GIRLS  OF  ENGLAND        203 

tated  by  what  is  mis-called  j)riidence,  while  the 
fruits  of  unions  consummated  in  such  solemn 
hours  when  the  future  of  Europe  trembles  in  the 
balances  of  God,  will  be  a  source  of  strength  in  the 
years  to  come.  They  will  surely  not  be  like  the 
offspring  of  exaggerated  comfort  or  monstrous 
luxury. 

It  seems  to  me,  reviewing  the  accomplishment 
of  so  many  girls  I  know  best,  that  war,  for  all  its 
tragedy,  may  well  leave  the  poor  remains  of  our 
civilisation  better  than  it  was  in  the  season  of  our 
opulence.  Without  regard  to  money  or  to  good 
looks  some  of  the  best  elements  of  the  race  have 
mated,  each  partner  to  the  union  understanding 
in  fashion  hitherto  unimaginable  not  only  that  the 
Empire  is  worth  the  best  we  have  to  offer,  but  that 
one  and  all,  regardless  of  the  world's  favours,  are 
bringing  their  sacrifice.  The  minorities,  noisy  or 
silent,  with  which  we  must  hereafter  deal,  the  resi- 
due of  profit-hunters  and  pleasure-seekers,  pass  al- 
most out  of  mind  as  one  sees  the  extraordinary 
transformation  that  war  has  wrought  in  a  class  that 
was  supposed  to  be  utterly  deaf  to  any  call  save 
the  call  of  amusement.  That  there  have  been  larger 
tributes  to  the  national  cause  is  a  commonplace, 
that  there  has  been  a  more  striking  one  I,  at  least, 
deny. 

Who  was  the  cynic  who  said  that  woman  was  the 


204  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

last  animal  that  man  would  civilise?  I  hope  and 
believe  he  has  not  lived  as  long  as  his  libel,  and 
yet  I  could  wish  that  somewhere  in  the  realms 
reserved  for  liars  he  could  be  permitted  to  see  a 
few  at  least  of  the  sights  that  have  gladdened  and 
stimulated  me  in  the  past  twelve  months,  ever  since 
the  women  workers  in  the  Empire's  cause  became 
fully  representative  of  every  class  in  the  realm. 


XXI 

THE   SOCIAL    HORIZON 

Very  early  in  the  war,  almost  before  the  Expedi- 
tionary l^'orce  ^^  as  under  arms,  the  Government  was 
foreed  by  the  grave  urgency  of  the  national  case 
to  apply  tlie  principles  of  socialism  to  certain  out- 
standing problems.  To  name  only  one  instance, 
we  may  mention  the  work  of  the  railways.  Social- 
ists have  always  urged  that  the  railroads  should 
be  taken  over  by  Government  in  the  national  in- 
terest, and  countless  reams  of  paper  have  been 
wasted  by  individualists  to  demonstrate  the  impos- 
sibility. But  needs  grew  paramount,  and  the  Gov- 
e'nmen*;,  by  a  stroke  of  the  pen,  took  the  railroads 
into  its  inexpert  keeping.  Nothing  has  happened 
to  make  the  country  regret  the  change.  The  fash- 
ion in  which  our  railwaj^s  (with  a  few  notable  ex- 
ceptions) are  conducted  is  so  utterly  bad  and  so 
profoundly  inefficient,  that  Government,  in  giving 
precedence  to  Government  business,  made  them 
very  little  worse.  Fares  are  a  trifle  higher,  trains 
rather  less  frequent,  carriages  dirtier  than  hereto- 
fore, but  Government's  proper  needs  and  unprac- 

205 


206  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

tised  handling  could  do  little  or  nothing  to  depress 
the  normal  standard.  As  the  war  progressed,  and 
various  common-sense  measures  were  required  to 
deal  with  war  profits,  war  contracts,  and  war  crises 
generally,  it  was  recognised  with  something  akin 
to  dismay  by  the  hierarchy  that  lives  behind  the 
times  that  in  many  instances  socialism  had  an- 
ticipated common-sense.  Then  a  strange  thing  hap- 
pened. In  a  very  unguarded  moment,  Mr.  Runci- 
man,  that  bright  young  man  whose  statesmanlike 
qualities  and  keen  sympathy  with  our  poor  ship- 
owners have  endeared  him  to  a  small  minority  at 
least  of  English-speaking  people,  was  heard  to  de- 
clare before  a  pained  and  startled  House  of  Com- 
mons that  where  Socialism  was  practical  and  met 
the  needs  of  the  hour,  he  was  prepared  to  adopt  it. 
In  other  words,  he  would  not  discard  a  useful  meas- 
ure because  it  was  socialistic  in  origin  or  tendencies ! 
What  magnanimity ;  what  a  sterling  recognition  of 
a  nation's  needs! 

Nobody  perhaps  quite  knows  what  measure  of 
concession  to  hard  truth  was  here  intended,  but  as 
a  statement  made  by  a  President  of  the  Board  of 
Trade,  the  utterance  deserved  more  attention  than 
it  received.  Perhaps  the  Press  Bureau  asked  news- 
papers to  take  no  marked  notice  of  a  hard-worked 
"statesman's"  slip  of  the  tongue.  One  would  wager 
that  it  did  not  pass  altogether  unrebuked  by  those 


THE  SOCIAL  HORIZON  207 

descendants  of  the  wise  men  of  Gotham,  who  would 
rather  see  the  Empire  lost  by  party  politicians  than 
saved  by  Socialists  or  Socialism. 

It  is  a  curious  fact,  and  one  that  the  historian 
of  the  future  will  surely  acknowledge,  that  Indi- 
vidualism has  been  discredited  by  the  war,  and  that 
the  appeal  of  both  our  leaders  and  misleaders, 
whatever  the  colour  of  their  party-political  opin- 
ions, has  been  to  the  principles  underlying  Social- 
ism. Even  in  Russia,  an  autocracy,  a  land  in  which 
the  Tsar  comes  in  the  popular  mind  very  near  to 
God,  the  appeal  to  the  nation  has  been  an  appeal, 
however  unconsciously,  to  Socialism.  The  root 
principle  of  Socialism  lies  in  a  great  National  Act. 
The  nation  must  work  together  for  the  national 
good.  So  far  has  this  idea  developed  that  in  the 
last  days  of  February,  a  reputed  reactionary,  M. 
INIarkoff,  rose  in  the  Duma  to  implore  the  Govern- 
ment "to  withdraw  its  shield  from  the  old  gang  of 
officials  who  look  upon  their  country's  adversities 
merely  as  a  favourable  opportunity  for  increasing 
their  perquisites"  (Daily  Telegraph,  Feb.  28th). 
Here,  under  the  pressure  of  giant  circumstance, 
we  find  an  appeal  made  for  the  united  action  and 
the  national  act.  In  Germany,  as  all  our  respon- 
sible, and  not  a  little  of  the  irresponsible.  Press  has 
frankly  admitted,  the  Socialist  party  is  the  only 
one  that  has  kept  its  head,  and  endeavoured  in  very 


208  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

difficult  circumstances  to  preserve  ideals.  The 
Vorwarts,  leading  organ  of  German  Socialism, 
though  it  regards  the  war  as  an  evil  for  which  Ger- 
many was  not  responsible,  has  courageously  op- 
posed all  the  actions  of  the  governing  class  that 
have  tended  to  lower  the  character  of  the  German 
people,  and  I  have  heard  some  of  the  best  informed 
students  of  European  politics  declare  that,  had  So- 
cial Democracy  been  allowed  another  ten  years  of 
peaceful  development  throughout  the  German  Em- 
pire, no  German  ruler  would  have  dared  provoke 
a  war  for  the  hegemony  of  Europe.  They  cannot 
deny  that  Socialism,  in  its  International  aspect, 
was  making  for  the  brotherhood  of  man.  No  other 
force  in  national  life  was  working  with  any  ap- 
proach to  equal  strength  and  sincerity  along  the 
same  road  and  in  pursuit  of  the  same  goal. 

Unfortunately,  under  the  conditions  that  beset 
and  damn  all  Europe,  the  people  have  no  voice  in 
the  supreme  decision  of  war.  Their  privilege  is 
to  fight  those  with  whom  they  have  no  quarrel. 
Theirs,  too,  to  sacrifice  in  appalling  numbers  their 
fathers,  husbands,  brothers,  and  sons,  to  give  up 
their  homes  and  savings,  to  acquiesce  blindly  in 
every  evil  that  marches  in  the  wake  of  strife.  Just 
as  the  men  ordered  from  the  trenches  to  be  mown 
down  by  shot  and  shell  are  given  or  offered  some 
form  of  raw  spirit  to  stimulate  and  even  intoxicate 


THE  SOCIAL  HORIZON  209 

them,  so  before  war  is  declared,  Governments, 
through  the  medium  of  a  docile  Press,  circulate 
the  lies  best  calculated  to  make  the  imminent  enor- 
mity appear  inevitable  and  just.  As  soon  as  the 
declaration  of  war  is  made,  the  common  patriotism 
of  nations  obscures  every  other  issue.  Men  must 
fight  for  hearth  and  home,  for  fatherland  and  all 
that  it  implies.  Primal  necessity  is  speaking,  and 
on  every  banner  of  every  nation  the  ominous  words 
"Vje  victis"  are  inscribed.  The  people  who  make 
war  and,  somewhere  out  of  Death's  ample  range 
direct  it,  understand  the  psychology  of  nations; 
their  skill  in  all  the  arts  of  deception  is  unrivalled. 
Yet  of  all  the  lessons  enforced  by  the  war  there 
is  none  that  has  come  with  greater  force  to  all 
whose  minds  are  not  hermetically  sealed  than  the 
lesson  that  Individualism  has  failed  completely  in 
the  hour  of  the  world's  extremist  need.  The  price 
we  have  paid  for  it  within  the  compass  of  two  brief 
years  is  the  total  loss  of  millions  of  lives,  the  future 
ineffectiveness  of  still  more,  the  sheer,  brutal  waste 
of  wealth  more  than  sufficient  to  have  solved  all 
the  economic  troubles  of  Europe.  Countless  think- 
ers in  all  belligerent  countries  have  been  forced  to 
the  conclusion  that  Socialism  is  the  only  force  capa- 
ble of  rendering  what  is  left  of  Europe  capable  and 
adequate  to  the  demands  upon  it.  Great  Britain, 
insular  by  act  of  God  and  the  general  tendency  of 


210  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

the  population,  is  fully  prepared  to  accept  Social- 
ism as  long  as  it  is  not  called  by  that  name,  for 
such  is  the  state  of  our  mental  development  that 
we  judge  all  political  goods  by  their  labels.  In 
other  countries,  where  social,  political,  and  eco- 
nomic conditions  are  not  merely  discussed,  but  un- 
derstood, where  the  people's  representatives  are  re- 
quired to  have  some  minimum  of  knowledge  in 
addition  to  birth,  money,  and  influence,  these  con- 
cessions to  popular  ignorance  and  prejudice  have 
been  swept  aside.  The  recognition  of  the  neces- 
sity for  sweeping  changes  is  made  without  fear. 
Even  in  Germany,  when  Dr.  Frank,  the  eminent 
Socialist,  was  reported  killed,  a  statement  was  pub- 
lished to  the  effect  that  the  Kaiser  had  expressed 
his  regrets  at  the  death  of  a  man  whose  gifts  would 
have  helped  the  country  in  the  days  when  schemes 
of  reconstruction  are  under  consideration. 

This  may  have  been  no  more  than  a  sop  to  the 
social  Democrats,  of  whom  upwards  of  two  mil- 
lions have  been  called  to  the  colours,  but  even  if  this 
be  so,  the  sop  is  a  significant  one,  and  could  not 
have  been  lightly  given. 

In  stricken  Belgium,  the  man  who  comes  next 
to  King  Albert  in  sheer  patriotic  endeavour  and 
in  the  gift  of  inspiring  the  nation  to  hold  up  its 
head  under  conditions  hard  for  any  of  us  to  realise, 
is  the  famous  Socialist  leader,  Emile  Vandervelde. 


THE  SOCIAL  HORIZON  211 

He  is  not  only  at  the  head  of  the  Belgian  ^Ministry 
of  War,  but  is  King  Albert's  most  trusted  adviser; 
his  gifts  overshadow  those  of  his  equally  devoted 
and  patriotic  colleagues.  The  thrill  of  horror  and 
shame  that  ran  through  France  when  Jean  Jaures 
fell  to  the  assassin's  bullet  in  the  opening  days  of 
war,  was  felt  far  beyond  the  French  borders.  Even 
in  the  tense  excitement  of  that  unhappy  season,  the 
French  Government,  after  voting  the  murdered  pa- 
triot a  public  funeral,  posted  in  every  Commune 
throughout  the  country  its  expression  of  horror  and 
regret.  To-daj%  a  Socialist  Prime  Minister  directs 
with  rare  skill  and  courage  the  fortunes  of  the  Re- 
public; the  French  National  Council  has  not  hesi- 
tated to  summon  to  its  ranks  such  an  uncompro- 
mising foe  of  Individualism  in  whatever  form  as 
Jules  Guesde.  None,  having  eyes  to  see,  ears  to* 
hear  with,  and  even  a  modest  gift  of  comprehension, 
can  fail  to  gather  from  this  the  tendency  of  the 
great  Power  with  which  we  are  now  so  closely  al- 
lied. Of  all  the  European  nations  there  is  none 
in  which  the  gift  of  political  sagacity  is  so  strongly 
marked  as  it  is  in  France,  none  to  which  the  gifts 
of  political  foresight  and  courage  have  been 
granted  in  equal  measure.  What  Paris  thinks  to- 
day, London  must  be  at  least  prepared  to  discuss 
in  the  very  near  future. 

There  is  no  secret  about  the  cause  of  the  action 


212  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

that  France  and  Belgium  have  taken  of  set  pur- 
pose. The  whole  essence  of  a  successful  struggle 
is  unity — unity  of  purpose,  of  feeling  and  of 
thought.  The  working  classes,  now  as  ever,  are 
bearing  in  every  country  the  bulk  of  the  burden 
of  war.  Sane  Governments  must  needs  endeavour 
to  secure  for  labour  an  adequate  representation  in 
their  midst.  Knowing  that  their  proper  interests 
are  being  subordinated,  if  at  all,  to  the  national 
cause,  and  not  for  private  profit  or  exploitation, 
labour  feels  that  it  is  secure,  and  will  give  all  it 
has  to  give  with  a  generosity  that  may  be  rivalled, 
but  can  never  be  excelled.  The  white  flame  of 
patriotism  is  only  kept  glowing  if  it  is  fed  by  the 
efforts  of  a  whole  community.  This  result  will 
never  be  quite  realised  here  in  England  until  all 
interests  are  united  in  a  Cabinet  that  stands  just 
now  for  very  little  more  than  the  propertied  classes. 
I  admit,  Mr.  Henderson,  Mr.  Brace,  and  Mr.  War- 
die,  have  all  been  given  some  office  to  placate  the 
great  Trade  Unions  from  which  so  much  is  de- 
manded to-day.  But  this  is  not  enough.  Our 
Cabinet  of  aged  ostriches  still  hides  its  head  in  the 
bushes  of  precedent  and  prejudice,  content  to  be- 
lieve that  what  it  does  not  wish  to  see  can  have  no 
existence,  and  fortified  in  this  strange  method,  that 
would  be  comic  if  it  were  not  tragic,  by  all  sec- 
tions of  the  capitalistic  Press.     International  So- 


THE  SOCIAL  HORIZON  213 

cialism  is  gathering  its  forces  throughout  Europe, 
and  in  the  United  States  as  well,  to  impose  })er- 
manent  peace  on  kings  and  other  anachronisms. 
Thinking  people  in  all  the  centres  of  civilisation 
agree  that  this  war  is  sounding  the  knell  of  privi- 
lege. But  England  remains  content  to  be  ruled 
by  la^^yers,  professional  politicians,  mid-Victorian 
relics,  and  doctrinaires.  Socialism,  the  master  force 
of  the  immediate  future,  is  deliberately  ignored. 
Well  might  Father  Adderley  (Canon  the  Honour- 
able James  Adderley,  so  beloved  in  the  slums  of 
Plaistow  and  Birmingham)  deplore  in  his  recently 
published  memoirs,  the  absence  from  Parliament 
or  from  the  Government  itself,  of  H.  INI.  Hynd- 
man,  the  Nestor  of  English  Socialism.  The  as- 
tonishing part  of  our  national  attitude  towards  this 
crisis  is  that  the  men  who  really  guide  and  influ- 
ence our  public  opinion,  the  live  men  of  letters,  are 
for  the  most  part  Socialists,  and  make  no  secret 
of  their  principles,  nor  have  they  ever  hesitated 
to  voice  their  suspicion  of  what  Matthew  Arnold 
called  "the  unelastic  pedantry  of  theorising  Liber- 
alism." Does  this  Government  think  that  all  this 
teaching  has  fallen  or  is  falling  on  deaf  ears  ?  Does 
it  forget  that  it  was  the  French  Encyclopaedists 
who  made  the  French  Revolution?  They  taught  a 
discontented  and  unhappy  people  to  think  and  the 
people  did  the  rest.    Our  rulers  have  always  moved 


214.  A  wo:man  and  the  war 

respectfully  behind  the  times,  but,  to  do  them  what 
justice  we  may,  be  it  remembered  that  they  never 
expected  to  live  through  seasons  that  impel  the 
times  to  move  with  giant  and  sudden  strides. 

Now,  even  in  the  latter  days,  all  these  things 
have  come  upon  them.  Will  they,  can  they,  rise 
to  the  height  of  the  occasion? 


XXII 

HOW  SHALL  WE  MINISTER  TO  WORLD  DISEASED? 

It  is  not  without  a  certain  significance  that,  while 
French  and  German  soldiery  were  sacrificing  them- 
selves by  their  thousands  to  the  Gods  of  War  in  and 
around  the  blood-stained  village  street  of  Douau- 
mont,  while  our  soldiers  were  holding  on  to  the  line 
of  the  Tigris,  near  whose  source  Russian  forces 
were  marching  southward  to  the  rescue,  the  Royal 
Commission  appointed  to  investigate  what  is  euphe- 
mistically called  "Social  Disease,"  issued  its  report. 
The  coincidence  from  certain  view-points  is  star- 
tling. 

The  report,  definitely  limited  as  to  its  scope, 
sober  in  its  statement,  and  appalling  in  its  revela- 
tion, is  a  solemn  reminder  to  the  world  of  civilised 
men  that  there  are  enemies  equally  deadly  and 
more  insidious  than  those  with  whom  any  belligerent 
is  concerned.  The  victims  of  the  diseases  discussed 
probably  outnumber,  in  Great  Britain  alone,  all 
her  defenders  on  sea  and  land.  Four  millions  of 
our  population,  with  power  to  add  to  their  num- 
ber, are  at  grips  with  a  deadly  enemy  in  various 

215 


216  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

stages  of  its  virulence;  an  enemy  who  will  "visit 
the  sins  of  the  fathers  upon  the  children  to  the  third 
and  fourth  generation."  Nay  more,  the  Commis- 
sioners whose  trained  minds  lend  solid  value  to 
their  every  utterance,  assure  us  that  after  a  war 
an  excessive  incidence  of  disease  i^  certain  to  occur, 
even  in  districts  previously  free.  There  are  other 
significant  comments.  "Our  evidence,"  they  tell 
us,  "tends  to  show  that  the  communication  of 
disease  is  frequently  due  to  intoxicants,  and  there 
is  no  doubt  that  the  growth  of  temperance  among 
the  population  would  help  to  bring  about  an  amelio- 
ration. We  are  also  conscious  of  the  fact  that 
overcrowded  and  insanitary  dwellings  contribute 
to  the  spread  of  disease,  and  from  improvements  in 
this  direction  we  should  expect  some  diminution  of 
its  prevalence." 

Let  us  consider  the  full  meaning  of  these  vivid 
comments.  AVhen  war  is  over,  we  shall  celebrate 
the  coming  of  peace  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  these  islands.  Countless  offerings  will 
be  laid  before  the  altar  of  the  brewer  and  the  dis- 
tiller; it  will  be  almost  dangerous  to  be  an  ab- 
stainer. For  a  time,  at  least,  the  barriers  of  re- 
straint will  be  torn  down.  Something  known  as 
"good  fellowship"  will  at  once  dictate  and  excuse 
an  orgie.  The  discipline  that  weak  minds  require 
will  be  honoured  in  the  breach  rather  than  the  ob- 


A  WORLD  DISEASED  217 

servance,  and  "an  excessive  incidence  of  disease  is 
certain  to  occur,  even  in  districts  previously  free." 
When  a  town  is  successfully  invaded,  and  a 
soldiery,  grown  reckless  after  lying  cheek  by  jowl 
with  death  flings  his  self-discipline,  mercy,  and  re- 
straint to  the  winds,  the  world  that  has  not  lost  its 
reason  is  sick  at  heart.  When  peace  is  proclaimed, 
and  the  return  to  civil  life  is  associated  with  a  li- 
cence that  outrages  the  living  and  damns  the  un- 
born, there  is  apparently  no  authority  that  can 
intervene,  no  public  opinion  capable  of  making  it- 
self felt.  The  living,  and  those  upon  whom  the 
heaviest  burden  of  life  is  to  be  imposed,  are  alike 
unprotected.  Not  only  is  this  so,  but  the  conditions 
that  must  make  for  their  undoing  are  cultivated  in 
the  interests  of  those  who  flood  the  land  with  spirits 
and  malt  liquors.  What  if  our  slums  help  infec- 
tion to  spread?  Are  not  slum-owners  often  men 
of  repute,  some  of  whom  sit  in  the  high  seats  of 
judgment  and  help  to  administer  a  world  they  are 
willing  to  degrade  still  further  in  the  sacred  name 
of  rent?  Do  we  not  make  a  man  a  Peer  if  he  can 
brew  sufficient  beer?  The  Commissioners  know 
better  than  to  plead  for  an  England  sober  or  an 
England  adequately  housed.  Theirs  not  to  pre- 
sume to  attack  vested  interests.  They  have  dared 
greatly  in  pointing  out  what  the  slum  and  the  gin 
palaces  contribute  to  the  spread  of  most  loathsome 


218  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

diseases  under  heaven.  There  they  must  stop. 
They  know  their  public.  "Improvement  in  the  so- 
cial conditions  and  in  the  moral  standard  may  be 
slow."  They  have  realised  what  our  modern  po- 
litical conditions  stand  for  throughout  Great  Brit- 
ain. They  even  admit  that  there  may  be  no  money 
for  improvement;  European  civilisation,  however 
inadequate  to  human  needs,  however  imperfect  and 
incomplete,  can  only  be  destroyed  at  heavy  ex- 
pense. The  destruction  demands  the  best  life-blood 
of  every  belligerent  nation  and  all  available  finan- 
cial resources.  What  can  be  left  to  combat  "so- 
cial disease,"  cancer,  consumption,  drink,  slums, 
and  the  other  evils  that  destroy  even  more  than 
war,  but  have  nothing  arresting  or  spectacular  in 
their  methods  ?  The  Commissioners  plead,  it  would 
seem,  with  more  of  earnestness  than  hope. 

Perhaps  the  most  appalling  side  of  "social 
disease"  is  due  to  its  utter  absence  of  respect  for 
persons.  We  could  wish  in  the  interests  of  hu- 
manity as  at  present  constituted  that  the  germs 
could  themselves  be  inoculated  with  genuine  Eng- 
lish snobbery,  so  that  they  would  refrain  from  at- 
tacking "high  personages."  Apparently,  germs 
are  untutored  things.  They  ignore  class  distinc- 
tions. They  attack  with  equal  impartiality  the 
drunken  soldier  of  a  garrison  town,  the  sailor  set 
free,  after  a  long  voyage,  in  an  evil  seaport  with 


A  WORLD  DISEASED  219 

money  burning  holes  in  his  pocket,  and  the  crowned 
head  who,  in  the  days  of  his  indiscretion,  lived  as 
lewdly  as  the  soldier  or  sailor  without  the  excuse 
of  either.  The  wages  of  sin  is  death.  "Social 
disease"  affects  the  ordered  function  of  the  brain, 
and  when  that  brain  is  in  the  skull  of  one  who  con- 
trols the  destinies  of  Empire,  the  dread  death- 
wages  must  be  paid  by  the  rank  and  file  of  his 
subjects.  Nobody  has  dared  yet  to  write  fully 
and  freely  of  the  influence  of  social  disease  upon 
the  decrees  of  European  rulers.  Though  the  hide- 
ous facts  are  known  well  enough  in  certain  cir- 
cles, they  are  hardly  discussed.  Perhaps  the  scan- 
dal is  one  from  which  the  sharpest  pen  shrinks  ap- 
palled. Consider  the  cercle  prive  from  which  Eu- 
rope's dynasts  spring,  the  tendencies  of  upbring- 
ing, the  intermarriage,  the  temptation,  the  effect 
upon  narrow  minds  and  exhausted  stocks.  The 
light  is  beginning  to  shine  upon  thrones.  The 
world  is  beginning  to  ask  why  so  much  of  madness 
is  manifest  in  the  ranks  of  rulers,  and  whether  in 
the  wide  interests  of  humanity  the  breed  is  not  of 
more  importance  than  the  blood.  At  present  the 
question  is  asked  sotto  voce,  the  time  is  surely  com- 
ing when  it  will  ring  through  Europe.  But  for 
the  moment  there  is  a  still  larger  question  at  stake. 
The  publication  of  the  Royal  Commission's  Re- 
port is  a  warning  and  a  challenge  to  the  democracy. 


220  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

not  only  of  Great  Britain,  but  of  the  world.  It  tells 
them  that  the  real,  the  enduring  enemy,  is  not  the 
German,  the  Briton,  the  Frenchman,  or  the  Rus- 
sian. The  enemy  is  not  on  the  battlefield,  but  in  the 
homeland,  in  the  street,  perhaps  in  the  house.  He 
has  invaded  every  country  in  Europe  without  ex- 
ception. Battleships,  heavy  ordnance,  elaborate 
trenches,  are  of  no  avail.  Treaties  of  peace  cannot 
be  made  effective  until  they  are  signed  between  a 
vigilant  and  victorious  democracy  on  the  one  hand 
and  a  defeated,  privileged  class  on  the  other. 

The  national  resources  required  to  meet  a  foul 
disease  are  taken  from  us  to-day  in  measure  be- 
yond precedent  to  meet  an  expenditure  for  which 
the  demand  was  created  by  kings  and  statesmen. 
There  was  no  reference  to  the  will  of  the  people; 
until  such  time  as  that  will  could  be  neither  logi- 
cal nor  effective.  The  world's  working  men,  deci- 
mated to  satisfy  the  ambitions  of  their  misrulers, 
must  return  in  greatly  diminished  numbers  and 
with  lives  crippled  and  wasted  by  the  million,  to 
find  the  old  enemies  at  their  gate  and  the  worst 
and  ugliest  of  these  enemies  prepared  to  take  ad- 
vantage of  peace  by  waging  more  deadly  war.  And 
those  who  will  administer  their  shattered  dynasties 
will  include  members  of  families  that  are  notori- 
ously tainted  by  "social  disease."  Surely  viler 
prospect  were  hard  to  find. 


A  WORLD  DISEASED  221 

Yet  there  is  not  under  heaven  an  evil  for  which 
there  is  no  remedy.  If  the  people  sacrificed  to 
armament  makers,  diplomats,  and  dynasts  will  join 
hands  across  the  world  they  can  overcome  the  en- 
emies without  and  within.  Their  strength,  if  they 
will  but  put  it  forward,  is  irresistible,  far  greater 
than  they  know.  They  should  have  no  more  illu- 
sions. They  are  many ;  those  who  exploit  them  are 
few.  Before  the  war  the  great  international  move- 
ment was  growing.  A  series  of  ultimatums,  of 
frenzied  calls  to  patriotism,  racial  prejudice  and 
fear,  frosted  the  ripening  blossoms,  but  could  not 
reach  the  root  that  lies  deep  down  in  the  heart 
of  suffering  humanity.  Internationalism  will  rise 
again.  Those  who  have  a  finger  upon  the  pulse 
of  the  workers  the  world  over,  know  that  the  life 
forces,  depressed  for  a  time,  are  giving  a  grow- 
ing vigour  to  the  beat.  Already  they  see  the  rulers 
of  the  world  deploring  the  catastrophe  that  they 
brought  about,  becoming  conscious  that  their 
hands  drip  blood.  Already  they  see  that  normal 
evils  are  not  merely  remaining  unabated  but  are 
actually  growing,  that  a  world  returned  to  sanity 
and  humility  will  find  more  vileness  to  combat  and 
fewer  means  to  its  aid.    It  will  look  for  a  lead. 

That  is  why  there  is  so  much  reason  to  hope  that 
the  United  States  will  not  be  drawn  into  war. 
There,  the  workers  of  Europe  are  already  begin- 


222  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

ning  to  look  for  guidance,  direction,  help,  and  ac- 
tual co-operation  in  the  ultimate  struggle  for  free- 
dom, that  when  war  is  over  they  may  combat  the 
yet  worse  evils  around  them.  Our  thoughts  turn 
to  the  New  World,  redeemed  from  kings  and  popes 
and  the  tragic  remains  of  feudalism,  and,  largely 
on  that  account,  at  peace.  Consider  the  vile,  naked 
truth  that  we  in  England  may  lack  the  means  ade- 
quately to  conquer  the  "social  disease,"  the  white 
scourge,  the  slum  problem,  and  other  shames  of 
man's  own  making  because  our  national  resources 
are  being  sacrificed  to  such  destruction  as  sun, 
moon,  and  stars  have  never  looked  upon  since  first 
they  lit  the  earth. 

Our  rulers,  our  statesmen,  our  parliaments,  our 
laws  alike,  have  failed  us.  Judge  them  by  their 
fruits,  as  hereafter  surely  they  must  be  judged. 
There  is  nothing  left  between  Europe  and  the  abyss 
but  the  solidarity  of  the  working  classes,  the  spread 
of  democracy,  the  overthrow  of  every  effete  insti- 
tution that  exists  for  no  better  reason  than  that 
it  has  been  allowed  to  exist  so  long.  We,  the  Inter- 
nationalists, look  to  the  United  States,  that  island 
of  sanity  set  in  a  raging  sea  of  madness.  We  look 
to  it  for  light  and  leading,  for  encouragement  and 
support.  It  is  the  only  great  power  left  to  read 
the  lessons  of  world- war  without  prejudice.  1 
would  like  the  terrible  indictment  penned  against 


A  WORLD  DISEASED  223 

our  modern  civilisation  by  the  Royal  Commission 
to  be  read  by  every  thinking  American  of  whose 
political  faith  democracy  is  the  vital  essence.* 

"This   is   tliat   Blossom   on   our   human   tree 
Which   opens   once  in  many  myriad  years 
But  opened,  fills  the  world  with  Wisdom's  scent 
And  Love's  dropped  honey." 

*  1  would  like  it  studied  in  the  red  light  of  war,  that  our 
cousins  oversea  with  their  generous  instincts,  quick  judgment 
and  resourceful  minds  may  be  stimulated  to  assist  the  workers 
of  all  nations  when  once  this  terrible  chapter  of  our  life  is 
closed.  United  action  will  make  impossible  in  the  future  all 
wars  save  that  which  is  waged  against  disease,  privilege,  and 
ineffectiveness. 


XXIII 

HOW  I  WOULD  WORK  FOR  PEACE 

For  a  long  time  past,  ever  since  it  was  realised  that 
the  countless  campaigns  to  which  we  are  committed 
would  be  long  in  following  their  appointed  course, 
costly  in  progress  and  revolting  in  detail,  all  man- 
ner of  people  have  come  forward  to  explain  that 
they  have  mastered  the  causes  and  the  cure  of  war. 
Belligerent  and  neutral  countries  alike  have  put 
forward  their  panaceas,  and  Qreat  Britain  has  held 
some  particularly  active  groups,  perhaps  because, 
while  strife  fills  her  horizon,  only  Zeppelins  have 
succeeded  in  bringing  the  actualities  home  to  those 
who  are  not  serving.  Then,  too,  we  have  always 
had  in  the  country  a  number  of  men  and  women 
who  believe  honestly  that  war  is  a  madness  and 
crime,  that  their  contention  can  be  proved  by  ar- 
gument, and  that  because  they  imagine  war  does 
not  really  benefit  anybody,  nobody  really  wants 
war. 

There  are  others  who  do  not  go  quite  so  far  as 
this,  being  content  to  saddle  policies  or  individuals 
with  the  responsibility.    Secret  diplomacy  is,  we  are 

224 


HOW  I  WOULD  WORK  FOR  PEACE        225 

assured,  a  fruitful  source  of  wars,  and  we  are  in- 
vited to  place  our  cards  on  the  table,  and  instruct 
our  diplomats  to  tell  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and 
nothing  but  the  truth.  Out  of  these  theories  are 
born  societies  like  the  Union  of  Democratic  Con- 
trol, and  many  unnecessary  speeches  by  people  who 
are  apt  to  confuse  martyrdom  and  unpopularity. 

War  gives  rise  to  optimists,  like  Mr.  Henry 
Ford,  who,  quite  oblivious  to  gibes  and  sneers,  char- 
ters a  steamer  and  proceeds  to  Europe,  that  he  may 
call  upon  belligerents  to  cease  their  quarrels,  be- 
cause even  from  the  distant  city  of  Detroit,  he 
can  see  how  foolishly  they  are  behaving. 

It  may  be  easy  to  laugh  or  to  sneer  at  these 
manifestations.  I  find  it  impossible  to  do  either. 
In  every  one  of  these  efforts,  great  or  small,  nota- 
ble or  ludicrous,  something  of  the  spirit  that  is 
helping  the  world  to  progress  is  made  manifest. 
If  men  and  women  who  have  little  in  life  except 
the  respect  of  their  circle,  deliberately  sacrifice  that 
precious  asset  for  the  sake  of  saying  what  they  be- 
lieve to  be  the  truth,  they  are  worthy  of  regard, 
and  let  us  rem.ember  that  most  of  us  are  amongst 
those  who  would  rather  be  stoned  than  laughed  at. 

If  I  have  criticism  for  panaceas  that  are  to  rid 
the  nation  of  war  as  patent  medicine-vendors  offer 
to  rid  the  individual  of  disease,  if  I  look  a  little 
askance  at  all  schemes  of  international  betterment 


A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

by  will  of  the  people,  it  is  because  all  equality  of 
reasoning  power,  all  movement  towards  higher 
things,  is  conditioned  by  education. 

We  are  very  much  like  our  fruit-trees.  If  you 
plant  one  hundred  trees  of  equally  good  appear- 
ance and  quality  on  a  good  soil,  and  you  attend 
to  fifty,  and  leave  the  other  fifty  to  look  after  them- 
selves, what  is  going  to  happen?  The  trees  that 
have  clean  soil  round  the  roots,  that  are  pruned  and 
washed  and  shaped  in  the  way  they  should  go  will 
yield  abundantly,  look  well,  and  live  long;  the  others 
will  be  uncertain  in  their  growth,  unattractive  in 
aspect,  and  liable  to  fail  or  become  diseased. 

In  England  we  pay  scant  heed  to  the  prosperity 
of  the  race,  we  are  far  more  concerned  with  the 
prosperity  of  the  race-course.  We  have  been  taught 
to  care  less  for  the  well-being  of  the  public  than 
of  the  publican. 

I  do  not  write  in  any  bitterness  of  spirit,  but  I 
remember  how  long,  and  successfully  the  race- 
course struggled  against  the  war,  how  definitely 
Mr.  Lloyd  George's  attempt  to  end  the  drink  traf- 
fic was  defeated  by  the  "trade,"  and  how,  on  the 
other  hand,  certain  alleged  economies  in  our  schools, 
designed  to  save  a  few  pounds  at  the  cost  of  ef- 
ficiency, have  been  accepted  with  hardly  a  protest. 

If  we  wish  to  raise  another  generation  that  may 
benefit  by  the  lessons  we  have  learned  and  paid 


HOW  I  WOUI.D  WORK  FOR  PEACE        227 

so  dearly  for,  we  must  educate  it,  and  education 
must  be  recognised  as  a  necessity,  something  as 
necessary  to  us  as  the  bread  we  eat,  and  more  im- 
portant than  professional  politicians,  public-houses, 
race-courses,  theatres,  and  motor-cars;  more  vital 
to  our  welfare  than  all  the  anmsements  of  the  rich 
and  the  poor  put  together. 

Without  education,  the  best  ideas,  the  highest 
ideals  must  be  lost  and,  as  things  are  here,  so  they 
are  elsewhere.  In  Kurope  the  only  belligerent  coun- 
tries that  have  developed  education  all  over  their 
territorj^  are  France  and  Germany.  In  some  of 
the  other  countries,  the  schoolmaster  does  not  cover 
a  tithe  of  the  domain,  and  rulers  do  not  wish  to 
see  the  area  of  activity  enlarged,  partly  because 
they  understand  it  is  easier  to  deceive,  divide,  and 
rule  the  ignorant,  and  partly  because  they  know 
that  the  rank  and  file  will  not  be  able  to  keep  pace 
with  the  enlightened  intelligences  to  which  the  most 
restless  elements  in  the  State  will  be  attracted.  Au- 
tocratic rule  cannot  endure  indefinitely  in  coun- 
tries M'here  the  proletariat  has  been  to  school,  even 
military  domination  might  in  time  be  questioned. 

But  what  bearing  has  this  upon  world  war?  you 
may  ask,  and  I  reply  that  it  has  a  considerable 
bearing  upon  the  whole  question,  because  the  great 
majority  of  those  who  ensue  peace  are  preaching 
just  now  to  the  converted. 


228  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

Those  who  make  the  next  war  may  be  despotic 
or  unconstitutional  rulers,  if  Europe  is  of  a  mind 
to  endure  such  people  after  this,  but  they  will  de- 
pend largely  upon  the  uneducated  classes,  or  upon 
an  iron  discipline  that  makes  every  man  a  slave 
of  him  who  represents  the  State.  Education  is 
the  one  reliable  antidote  to  ab<?olute  monarchy,  and 
despite  its  complete  failure  in  July  and  August, 
1914,  I  am  still  inclined  to  have  faith  in  the  In- 
ternational. It  failed  then,  for  each  belligerent 
country  called  out  that  it  was  in  danger,  and  in 
that  hour  when  the  social  democracy  might  have 
saved  Europe  from  the  loss  of  millions  of  promis- 
ing lives,  the  savings  of  one  generation  and  the 
progress  of  two,  it  failed.  But  nobody  will  recog- 
nise more  completely  than  the  social  democrat  the 
price  of  failure;  he  w^ill  see  that  democracy  must 
be  in  future  as  independent  of  boundaries  as  is  art 
or  science. 

I  believe  that  scores  of  men  and  women  have 
the  right  peace  methods,  that  there  are  many  plans 
by  which  peace  might  be  assured  to  the  world,  but 
no  one  of  these  can  possibly  become  effective  unless 
it  can  appeal  to  the  men  who  constitute  the  rank 
and  file  of  the  world's  armies,  and  to  their  wives 
and  sweethearts. 

The  only  other  way  out  of  the  tangle  is  for  vic- 
tory to  fall  upon  the  side  of  those  who  are  really 


HOW  I  WOULD  WORK  FOR  PEACE        229 

concerned  to  keep  the  peace,  and  there  is  more 
than  a  little  danger  in  this,  for  those  who  are  con- 
cerned only  with  peace  are  npt  to  forget  war  al- 
together— to  neglect  necessary  precautions,  cut 
down  reasonable  expenditure,  and  in  short,  to  give 
the  war-loving,  but  weaker  races,  a  chance  of  chal- 
lenging peace  afresh.  A  union  of  the  world's 
democracies  is  the  cure  for  war,  and  this  union  is 
not  possible  until  a  certain  standard  of  education 
has  been  reached  by  one  and  all.  Only  then  will 
the  man  to  whom  fighting  is  the  breath  of  life  un- 
derstand that  he  must  control  his  murderous  in- 
stincts or  perish  by  them. 

This  war  cost  many  years  of  preparation,  part 
of  it  secret,  and  it  is  hard  to  see  that  peace  can  be 
more  than  a  state  of  neutrality  enforced  by  pov- 
erty and  exhaustion.  To  make  it  abiding  will 
need  something  more  than  the  skill  and  cunning 
of  diplomats,  it  will  require  the  consent  of  the  peo- 
ple themselves,  and  this  they  will  give  when  they 
have  knowledge,  and  not  before. 

Educate!  Use  all  the  modern  developments  of 
our  civilisation  to  that  end.  Let  every  child  in 
Europe  be  taught  to  read  and  be  supplied  with 
books;  let  every  new  railway  line  be  hailed  as  an 
ambassador  of  peace.  Let  interchange  of  visits  be 
arranged  between  the  workers  of  all  countries,  so 
that  they  may  learn  that  antagonisms  belong  to 


A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

their  rulers  and  not  to  them.*  It  would  be  a  fine 
thing  to  have  a  panacea  that  acted  as  quickly  as 
quack  medicines  claim  to  act,  but  we  all  know  that 
such  cures  do  not  exist.  You  cannot  accomplish 
in  a  few  months  the  work  that  thousands  of  years 
have  left  unfinished.  After  all  that  has  been  said, 
let  us  remember  that  war  has  been  allowed  to  be 
the  rule  of  life  for  countless  generations.  We  in 
England  have  hardly  suffered,  the  United  States 
have  kept  free  from  actual  invasion,  but  nearly  all 
the  other  great  Powers  have  known  its  horrors  with- 
in the  comparatively  brief  period  of  our  lifetime. 

On  the  Continent,  war  is  one  of  the  incidents  of 
normal  life.  Men  are  trained  to  take  part  in  it  as 
a  completion  of  their  education,  women  are  en- 
couraged to  applaud  it  as  the  source  of  all  honours 
and  distinction.  England  and  America,  the  two 
least  threatened  countries,  would  hardly  appear  in 
a  good  light  as  peace  propagandists  on  the  Conti- 
nent, for  war  is  received  in  a  certain  false  perspec- 
tive there.  Thousands  glory  in  the  thoughts  of  a 
campaign,  proud  to  have  taken  part  in  one  as  our 
grandfathers  were  to  empty  two  or  three  bottles 
at  a  sitting.  This  false  perspective  is  the  greatest 
danger  we  have  to  face  in  educating  the  people:  it 

*  A  schoolmaster  in  Austria  for  saying  as  much  as  this  was 
sentenced  to  several  years'  hard  labour. 


HOW  I  WOULD  WORK  FOR  PEACE        231 

must  be  destroyed  before  war  will  be  seen  as  the 
thing  it  is. 

Human  nature  being  hard  to  move,  the  work 
must  progress  slowly,  but  it  is  not  the  less  worth 
undertaking  on  that  account.  Sane  peace  propa- 
ganda, accompanied  by  encouragement  of  physical 
fitness  and  explanation  of  the  significance  of  life, 
need  ofi*end  none,  and  will  benefit  all. 

The  real  facts  of  war  must  be  within  reach  of 
everybody,  tlie  camera  should  preserve  the  records 
of  trench,  battlefield,  and  sacked  town.  Every  city 
should  engrave  its  list  of  dead  where  all  may  read, 
and  in  the  cities  that  have  suffered  from  invasion 
the  full  details  of  the  horror  should  be  preserved. 
The  taxation  that  w^ill  grip  Europe  for  many  a 
year  to  come  should  always  be  associated  with  its 
prime  cause,  and  every  device  should  be  sought  to 
impress  upon  the  children  who  will  now  be  growing 
up  into  an  impoverished  world,  the  folly  and  help- 
lessness of  their  parents  who  were  unable  to  keep 
what  they  had  inherited,  whether  of  freedom  or 
worldly  wealth. 

We  who  are  middle-aged  will  be  hardly  called 
upon  to  see  war  again,  the  generation  captured  in 
its  prime  between  the  summers  of  1914  and  1916, 
will  have  been  ruined,  the  rule  of  the  world  will 
wait  upon  those  who  are  just  leaving  school. 

Here  the  propagandists  must  work,  and  as  there 


A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

is  hardly  a  big  family  in  belligerent  Europe  that 
has  not  contributed  life  or  fortune  in  some  degree, 
the  foundation  for  the  work  will  stand  prepared. 

If  I  were  asked  how  to  develop  sane  peace  propa- 
ganda, I  would  call  upon  those  who  have  gone 
through  the  war  to  tell  the  full  story  to  those  who 
have  remained  behind.  All  should  unite  to  this 
end  when  war  is  over.  Not  only  should  the  Eng- 
lishman tell  of  frozen  trenches  and  waterless  des- 
erts, but  Germans  and  Austrians  should  tell  of  the 
retreat  in  Galicia  and  the  advance  to  the  marshes 
of  Poland  and  Russia.  The  Servian  retreat  to 
Albania  and  the  nameless  horrors  of  Armenia 
should  be  recorded  by  survivors,  women  for  choice, 
and  men  of  all  belligerent  countries  should  speak  of 
the  horrors  of  the  man-of-war  that  sinks  blazing 
into  the  depths. 

The  camera  has  a  tale  to  tell  of  devastated  coun- 
try-side and  ruined  city,  of  all  the  havoc  and  waste 
of  war.    Let  that  tale  be  told. 

Let  the  maimed,  the  crippled,  the  blind,  the 
physically  useless,  come  forward — our  eyes  will 
learn  their  lesson. 

Let  the  Churches  speak,  not  at  the  bidding  of 
authority,  but  in  response  to  the  plea  of  humanity. 

Let  War,  divorced  from  the  physical  training 
incumbent  upon  men  and  women  alike,  take  its 
place  by  the  side  of  cancer,  cholera,  and  plague. 


HOW  I  WOULD  WORK  FOR  PEACE        233 

Let  the  authorities  tell  us  the  loss  of  all  com- 
munities in  material  wealth,  and  the  eugenist  speak 
of  the  blow  to  civilisation. 

Let  all  the  accumulated  facts  be  on  record  in 
every  public  library  in  the  world,  and  let  them  be 
available  even  to  the  illiterate. 

Here,  then,  when  the  greatest  of  world-tragedies 
draws  to  its  appointed  close,  is  the  means  I  would 
choose  to  render  its  repetition  impossible,  believing 
as  I  do  that  ignorance  is  the  root  from  which  all 
evil  springs. 


XXIV 

LORD  FRENCH 

My  first  meeting  with  Field-Marshal  Viscount 
French,  so  long  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  "con- 
temptible little  army"  that  has  made  history,  dates 
back  to  the  South  African  War.  My  latest  meet- 
ing with  him  before  he  returned  from  France,  was 
in  August,  1914.  On  each  occasion  he  was  on  the 
point  of  leaving  for  the  front. 

In  the  wide  space  that  separates  the  Boer  War 
from  the  great  international  conflict,  we  met  very 
often;  he  was  frequently  our  guest,  and  we  visited 
him  at  Government  House,  Aldershot.  I  have  had 
many  opportunities  of  hearing  his  views  of  the 
world  problem  that  confronts  us  now,  for  he  had 
seen  it  coming  nearer  and  nearer,  and  had  laboured 
night  and  day  to  meet  it.  Other  men  had  doubts; 
he  found  no  room  for  any. 

It  was  at  Claridge's  Hotel  in  town  that  we  met 
during  the  Boer  War.  My  eldest  son,  Guy,  had 
then  arrived  at  the  ripe  age  of  seventeen,  and  still 
at  Eton,  had  sold  all  his  personal  effects,  including 
his  fur  coat  and  jewellery  given  him  by  family  and 

234 


LORD  FRENCH  23S 

friends,  to  provide  himself  with  the  means  of  get- 
ting to  the  front  and  equipping  himself  when  there. 
We  only  learned  his  intentions  when  it  was  too  late 
to  stop  them,  and  I  do  not  think  that  either  my  hus- 
band or  myself  was  really  anxious  to  keep  him  from 
serving  his  country.  The  only  difficulty  was  to 
find  him  something  useful  to  do,  and  Sir  John 
French  offered  to  take  him  on  his  staff  as  galloper. 

I  recall  Lord  French  as  I  saw  him  at  Claridge's — 
firm-mouthed,  curt  in  manner,  briefly  incisive  in 
speech,  saying  no  more  than  was  absolutely  neces- 
sary, and  looking  at  me  with  the  curious  glance  that 
bespeaks  the  man  of  action  who  dreams  and  sees 
visions.  A  strong,  resolute  figure,  with  an  iron  will 
behind  it,  a  human  war  machine  in  perfect  order — 
that  was  my  first  impression. 

Many  of  my  soldier  friends  were  with  him  in 
South  Africa,  where  his  gifts  as  a  cavalry  leader 
roused  enthusiasm.  Writing  home  from  the  front, 
they  told  me  he  had  but  one  fault  as  a  commanding 
officer — he  could  not  realise  that  horses  do  not  re- 
spond as  readily  as  soldiers  to  human  emotions. 
He  could  overdrive  his  men,  and  they  did  their  ut- 
most for  him,  as  they  did  for  another  martinet,  the 
late  General  Gatacre,  because  in  each  case  they  had 
implicit  belief  in  their  leader's  direction  and  un- 
bounded faith  in  his  skill,  but  he  over-worked  his 
horses,  and  kept  the  remount  department  in  despair. 


A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

He  came  back  to  England  wearing  all  the  laurels 
of  a  successful  general,  and  I  met  him  several  times 
in  town.  "The  dust  of  praise  that  is  blown  every- 
where" was  no  more  to  John  French  than  any  other 
dust.  He  brushed  it  sharply  away,  and  devoted  all 
his  leisure  to  considering  the  problems  of  the  in- 
evitable struggle  with  Germany.  He  believed  then, 
with  that  curious  gift  of  divination,  that  it  must 
come,  and  he  came  near  to  fixing  the  date,  for  many 
years  have  passed  since  he  assured  me  that  it  would 
not  be  later  than  1915. 

When  the  Entente  Cordiale  was  in  the  air  and 
there  was  a  chance  that  Great  Britain  and  France 
would  work  side  by  side,  he  was  delighted.  Such 
an  arrangement  was  for  him  an  ideal  one,  and  he 
was,  I  may  say,  one  of  the  first,  if  not  the  very  first, 
of  our  leading  military  men  who  showed  a  full  ap- 
preciation of  its  value.  Unfortunately,  though  a 
well-educated  and,  in  a  strictly  professional  sense, 
a  deeply  read  man,  he  had  no  knowledge  of  the 
French  language,  and  he  could  not  rest  until  that 
defect  was  remedied.  So  in  the  Summer  of  1906 — 
I  think  this  was  the  year — he  settled  in  the  little  vil- 
lage of  La  Boule,  near  Rouen,  and  lived  for  three 
months  in  absolute  retirement,  mastering  the  lan- 
guage. He  would  not  claim  to  have  acquired  the 
Parisian  accent,  but  he  can  at  least  speak  fluently. 

We  were  motoring  through  France  that  summer 


LORD  FRENCH  237 

and  stayed  in  the  little  hotel  he  had  chosen  for  his 
headquarters.  He  was  extremely  anxious  to  take 
nie  on  a  motor  tour  over  the  scene  of  Napoleon's 
last  campaii^n,  an  ambition  of  long  standing  only 
now  possible  of  fulfilment.  We  came  very  near  to 
going  witli  him,  but  unfortunately,  something  inter- 
vened. Even  Lord  French  cannot  make  war  any- 
thing but  unspeakably  horrible  to  me,  but  I  am  yet 
free  to  confess  that  his  vast  knowledge  and  soid- 
deep  convictions  make  it  fearfully  interesting. 

We  could  not  manage  the  motor  tour,  which 
would  have  covered  Waterloo,  but  later,  when  in 
Paris,  I  was  able  to  put  his  views  before  the  then 
"  Premier,  M.  Clemenceau,  whom  I  knew  well.  I 
had  a  very  long  and  intimate  conversation  about 
the  Entente  with  the  "Tiger,"  as  they  called  him  in 
France,  and  I  remember  how  he  wheeled  round  in 
his  chair  and  said  to  me  in  the  frank,  outspoken 
way  that  his  opponents  hate  and  fear,  "Lady  War- 
wick, the  Entente  is  of  no  use  to  us  unless  your 
countrj'^  can  put  400,000  soldiers  into  France  in 
the  hour  of  need."  I  may  remark  that  the  French 
army  was  not  then  in  its  present  state  of  efficiency. 

I  pointed  out  that  I  was  not  in  the  confidence 
of  our  War  Office,  and  that  his  application  should 
be  made  to  other  quarters,  and  went  on  to  ask  him 
to  meet  General  French  to  talk  over  the  matters 
in  question.    "I'll  do  that  with  pleasure,"  said  M. 


238  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

Clemenceau.  "I  regard  your  General  French  as 
one  of  the  few  soldiers  who  understand  military- 
problems  from  their  roots  upwards."  So  the  two 
men  met,  and  I  think  they  liked  and  respected  one 
another. 

I  remember  reporting  the  gist  of  their  conversa- 
tion in  a  long  letter  to  King  Edward,  who  in  his 
reply  told  me  his  interest  in  the  military  side  of 
the  Entente  had  been  greatly  strengthened.  In 
the  following  year  several  of  the  leading  generals  of 
France  were  invited  over  to  attend  the  military 
manoeuvres  and  were  the  guests  of  Sir  John  and 
Lady  French  at  Government  House,  Aldershot.  I 
was  asked  to  meet  them,  and  heard  at  first  hand 
the  discussion  of  many  difficulties  that  are  staring 
us  in  the  face  as  I  write.  I  do  not  think  I  have 
ever  had  more  occasion  to  be  glad  that  I  was  taught 
some  foreign  languages  properly. 

On  his  return  to  England  Sir  John  French  di- 
vided his  work  into  sections.  First  and  foremost 
came  the  German  question,  for  he  knew  perfectly 
well,  in  the  light  of  the  ample  information  that  came 
to  him,  how,  sooner  or  later,  Germany  would  fling 
down  the  gauntlet,  perhaps  before  Europe,  cer- 
tainly before  Great  Britain.  His  other  task  was 
concerned  with  the  possible  invasion  of  India  by 
Russia.    In  early  days  he  had  seen  service  in  India, 


LORD  FRENCH  239 

and  I  have  by  me  now  a  copy  of  his  own  plans  for 
the  defence  of  our  great  empire  there. 

King  Edward  took  Lord  French  with  him  when 
he  went  to  meet  the  Czar  at  Reval,  and  this  visit, 
at  which  the  foimdation  of  Anglo-Russian  good- 
fellowship  was  laid,  had  a  most  reassuring  effect 
upon  his  mind.  Thereafter  he  devoted  himself 
whole  heartedly  to  the  study  of  the  Anglo- German 
danger. 

Taking  for  his  motto  the  well-known  maxim  that 
it  is  allowable  to  learn  even  from  an  enemy — he 
adapted  what  he  thought  was  best  from  the  Ger- 
man methods,  and  it  is  well  known  that  he  and  his 
close  and  trusted  friend,  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  in 
making  the  British  Army  the  perfect  machine  that 
it  is,  bore  well  in  mind  the  lessons  to  be  gathered 
from  the  German  manoeuvres. 

He  objected  strongly  to  the  German  close  forma- 
tion, holding  it  wasteful  and  unwise.  He  had 
grafted  South  African  experience  on  his  stock  of 
tactical  knowledge,  and  if  the  drilling  of  our  men 
was  terribly  hard,  he  and  Sir  Douglas  found  the 
ripe  fruits  of  it  in  that  wonderful  retreat  from  Mons 
and  in  the  battles  round  Ypres.  For  German  thor- 
oughness he  had  a  generous  and  unstinted  admira- 
tion.   Prejudice  can  find  no  place  in  his  mind. 

His  prevision  of  the  course  of  the  present  cam- 
paign startles  me  as  I  recall  it  now.    He  told  me 


240  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

years  ago  much  that  has  happened  since  the  great- 
est world  struggle  of  history  began. 

A  born  soldier,  he  is  merciless  to  the  inefficient. 
He  broke  a  high  officer,  who  was  also  a  personal 
friend,  because  that  officer  made  a  bad  blunder. 
Private  considerations  were  swept  aside,  as  they 
always  are  with  him.  He  spares  nobody,  least  of 
all  himself,  but  his  men  love  him  almost  as  much 
as  they  trust  him,  and  he  watches  over  their  proper 
comforts  with  a  jealous  eye.  They  are  the  com- 
ponent parts  of  the  war  machine,  and  must  be  at 
their  best. 

Lord  French  has  not  much  in  common  with  his 
gifted  sister,  Mrs.  Despard,  who  was  prominently 
before  the  public  when  the  suffrage  question  came 
near  to  rivalling  Home  Rule  in  its  claim  on  public 
attention,  for  Mrs.  Despard's  life  is  one  of  self- 
sacrifice  to  lighten  the  sorrows  of  others.  But  to 
one  well  acquainted  with  brother  and  sister,  there 
are  the  qualities  of  calm  resolution  in  the  face  of 
danger  and  of  commanding  will  to  be  associated 
with  each. 

I  do  not  think  he  reads  much,  save  books  deal- 
ing with  military  questions.  He  does  not  hunt  or 
shoot,  or  play  polo  or,  indeed,  acknowledge  any 
form  of  sport.  He  stands  professionally  as  far 
apart  from  the  ordinary  mundane  interests  of  life 
as  any  professor  in  the  cloistered  peace  of  an  old 


LORD  FRENCH  241 

university  town,  and  yet  he  is  full  to  the  brim  of 
vitalising  enthusiasms  not  to  be  overlooked  by  his 
friends  because  they  are  controlled. 

He  lives  in  his  profession  and  breathes  the  very 
air  of  it;  soldiering  claims  his  every  thought,  and 
yet  he  is  in  no  aspect  the  "beau  sabreur"  of  the 
Ouida  novels.  If  you  were  to  drive  with  him 
through  the  most  exquisite  landscape,  his  mind's 
eye  would  at  once  select  the  salient  points  of  at- 
tack and  defence,  he  would  grasp  every  military 
possibility  of  what  lay  before  him,  but  the  sur- 
rounding beauty  would  pass  him  by.  Sometimes 
we  have  talked  of  war.  "I  hate  war  as  much  as 
you    do,"    he    has    said    to   me    more    than   once, 

"but "     There  it  ends,  and  he  is  looking  with 

far-seeing  eyes  at  encounters  yet  to  be. 

In  the  conventional  sense  he  has  no  religion,  and 
yet  I  regard  him  as  one  of  the  most  religious  men 
I  know.  His  views  of  the  hereafter  are  clear;  he 
is  confidently  assured  of  the  soul's  survival,  its  re- 
incarnation, the  fulfilment  of  its  ambitions.  He 
is  an  idealist,  an  enthusiast,  a  man  who  could  not 
act  dishonestly  if  he  tried,  faithful  to  the  bitter  end 
to  those  in  whom  he  trusts. 

Much  of  the  recent  gossip  in  London  has  en- 
deavoured to  suggest  that  he  has  been  a  party  to 
the  intrigues  of  others.  I  venture  to  say  that  no- 
body who  understands  Lord  French  could  make 


242  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

such  a  foolish  mistake.  The  personal  interests  and 
trickery  of  small  natures  have  no  meaning  for 
him.  First  and  last  and  all  the  time  he  is  a  sol- 
dier, probably  the  one  soldier  who  could  have  over- 
come the  enormous  difficulties  by  which  he  has 
been  faced.  He  is  the  type  of  the  leader  of  men, 
an  example  of  the  power  of  concentration  driving 
a  single  purpose  to  its  end.  I  think  Frederick  the 
Great  would  have  made  much  of  him  and  that  his 
chief  hero  in  a  military  sense,  the  first  Napoleon, 
would  have  kept  him  by  his  side. 

He  has  been  sorely  tried.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that 
Sir  Douglas  Haig,  who  in  a  military  sense  is  his 
creation,  will  realise  his  teacher's  dreams  and  am- 
bitions. 


XXV 

LORD  haldane:  some  recollections  and  an 

ESTIMATE 

In  the  library  this  morning  I  came  by  chance  upon 
a  book  that  should  not  have  been  there — a  "Life 
of  Lassalle"  that  Lord  Haldane  lent  me  some  years 
ago,  and  which  I  had  forgotten  to  return.  It 
chanced  that  within  the  hour  I  had  thrown  aside  in 
disgust  the  Tory  daily  paper  that  held  a  vulgar  and 
rancorous  attack  upon  the  Ex- War  Minister.  Per- 
haps it  was  the  coincidence  that  set  me  thinking. 

My  mind  travelled  back  to  the  day  not  so  many 
years  ago — King  Edward  had  lately  ascended  the 
throne — when  I  met  Lord  Haldane  for  the  first 
time.  It  was  at  Dalmeny,  Lord  Rosebery's  home 
on  the  Firth  of  Forth.  I  forget  who  was  of  the 
party,  at  least  I  can  remember  only  Winston 
Churchill,  then  coming  under  our  host's  political 
influence.  My  first  recollection  of  Mr.  Haldane 
as  he  was  in  those  days  was  meeting  him  in  the 
Library.  He  was  busy  arranging  his  host's  treas- 
ures to  the  best  advantage  and  was  very  little  con- 
cerned with  the  house  party's  social  side.    He  would 

243 


244  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

appear  at  table,  create  an  immediate  impression 
by  reason  of  his  illuminating  conversation,  and,  the 
meal  taken,  would  slip  back  again  to  his  beloved 
books.  I  carried  away  from  Dalmeny  the  impres- 
sion of  one  of  the  most  interesting  men  I  had  ever 
met — a  man  with  massive  head,  twinkling  eye  and 
witty  speech  that  stimulated  all  and  hurt  none. 
He  was  that  rara  avis  a  lawyer  without  guile,  a 
philosopher  untainted  by  the  Courts.  We  met 
again,  and  again  I  was  immensely  attracted  by  his 
personality.  In  the  world  we  met  in,  men  and 
women  were  seeking  success  of  some  sort  all  the 
time.  Wealth,  prestige,  political  power,  social  in- 
fluence, whatever  our  weakness  it  rose  to  the  sur- 
face like  a  cork.  Of  all  these  things  Mr.  Haldane 
seemed  supremely  unconscious,  he  swam  through 
the  social  waters  like  a  kindly  triton  among  min- 
nows. Even  in  those  days  he  had  long  been  a  de- 
vout student  and  an  ardent  admirer  of  what  was 
best  in  Germany,  and  I  think  it  was  because  I  too 
was  interested  in  the  marvellous  progress  of  that 
Empire  that  we  found  something  in  common.  And 
he  lent  me  the  "Life  of  Lassalle,"  the  book  that  lies 
before  me  as  I  write. 

I  have  sincere  belief  in  the  intuitive  perception 
of  women.  I  believe  that  their  instinct  is  stronger 
than  their  reasoning  faculty,  and  that  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases  they  are  justified  in  their  belief. 


LORD  HALDANE  245 

even  if  they  call  it  a  prejudice.  From  the  begin- 
ning of  our  acquaintance  it  seemed  to  me  that  Lord 
Ilaldane  would  in  any  large  affairs  of  life  be  mis- 
judged by  his  countrymen.  In  the  first  place  he 
is  a  great  intellect,  and  as  a  nation  we  hold  all 
knowledge  suspect.  Secondly,  he  lacked  the  proper 
qualifications  of  the  parliamentarian :  he  had  noth- 
ing of  the  divine  gift  of  push.  He  did  not  enjoy 
the  limelight,  and  as  for  advertising  himself,  I 
think  he  would  not  have  known  how  to  begin.  I 
do  not  believe  he  ever  wished  to  enter  the  political 
arena,  he  never  was  a  politician  in  the  party  sense, 
but  he  succumbed  to  the  influence  of  Lord  Rose- 
bery  and  INIr.  Asquith  who  saw  that  so  great  an 
intelligence  would  be  of  infinite  value  to  the  Lib- 
eral party.  To  me  it  always  seemed  a  pity  to  drag 
the  kindly  philosopher  from  his  study  and  to  bring 
him  upon  the  shabby  stage  whereon  the  tragi-com- 
edy  of  party  politics  is  played  for  the  bemusement 
of  the  general  public.  Perhaps  Lord  Haldane's 
long  and  intimate  study  of  the  best  side  of  Ger- 
man life  led  the  Liberal  leaders  to  believe  that  he 
would  be  persona  grata  in  circles  that  could  curb  the 
worst.  Perhaps  they  too  were  fascinated  by  the 
breadth  of  his  views,  the  range  of  his  knowledge, 
the  serenity  of  his  outlook,  and  the  clarity  of  his 
judgments.  There  is  no  doubt  that  he  used  all  his 
powers  to  come  to  such  a  friendly  arrangement  with 


246  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

Germany  as  could  be  reached  without  detriment  to 
any  of  the  interests  of  our  friends  and  allies  in  Eu- 
rope. There  is  no  doubt  that  he  was  face  to  face  for 
years  with  the  conditions  that  reached  their  climax 
in  July,  1914,  and  that  he  did  all  that  was  possible 
to  preserve  peace  while  preparing  for  the  defence 
of  the  country. 

Our  Tories  demanded  a  scapegoat;  the  Lillipu- 
tians of  Westminster  and  Fleet  Street  have  flung  a 
thousand  venomed  darts  at  Gulliver.  I  am  grate- 
ful to  think  that  I  know  the  real  man  whose  aspect 
they  have  succeeded  for  a  little  while  in  distorting. 
Quite  steadfastly  he  opposed  German  militarism, 
quite  hopefully  he  clung  to  the  belief  that  he  would 
succeed  in  his  great  quest  of  peace.  Perhaps  he 
'was  too  confident.  Perhaps  he  underrated  the 
forces  that  were  opposed  to  him  not  only  abroad 
but  at  home. 

We  are  too  near  the  history  of  our  own  time  to 
tell,  but  I  remember  one  incident  that  revealed  to 
me  the  seriousness  of  the  struggle  in  which  he  was 
engaged.  There  was  a  meeting  to  develop  the  Ter- 
ritorial movement  in  the  county  town,  and  I  found 
myself  sitting  by  his  side  at  the  luncheon.  Fol- 
lowing it  he  made  one  of  the  most  stimulating 
speeches  I  have  ever  listened  to,  appealing  to  terri- 
torials to  come  forward  and  prepare  themselves  to 
help  their  country.     For  simple  direct  eloquence. 


LORD  HALDANE  247 

for  a  call  to  the  highest  and  noblest  feelings  without 
one  vulgar  thought  or  unworthy  expression,  I  have 
never  heard  a  speech  to  equal  it.  Only  a  great 
statesman  and  a  man  full  of  the  loftiest  patriotism 
could  have  spoken  as  he  spoke.  Those  who  are  well 
informed  know  what  we  owe  to  the  system  of  train- 
ing devised  by  this  lawyer-philosopher  and  how 
wonderfully  it  has  borne  expansion  to  meet  the  sud- 
den needs.  His  critics  have  never  paused  to  re- 
member that  he  was  a  loyal  member  of  a  Cabinet 
that  imposed  its  collective  will  upon  the  people; 
they  have  not  realised  how  largely  the  decisions 
of  the  Foreign  Office  would  have  availed  to  control 
his  own  views.  It  is  so  easy  to  say  that,  rather  than 
submit  to  any  reduction  of  our  forces  he  should  have 
resigned.  Those  who  know  Lord  Haldane  are  well 
aware  that  pride  of  place  would  never  have  kept 
him  in  an  office  that  absorbed  all  his  leisure. 
Thoughtful  people  will  realise  that  one  of  the  ten- 
ets held  by  a  loyal  Cabinet  minister  is  subordination 
of  personal  views  to  the  collective  views  of  the  min- 
istry. If  every  man  who  could  not  follow  his  chief 
along  a  given  road  were  to  resign  he  would  not  only 
lose  all  chance  of  giving  effect  to  his  purposes  but 
he  would  make  Cabinet  rule  an  impossibility. 

While  preparing  the  country  for  defence.  Lord 
Haldane  had  to  fight  the  militarism  that  has  at  last 
run  wild  through  Europe ;  while  providing  for  the 


248  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

worst,  he  had,  in  the  highest  interests  of  his  coun- 
trymen, to  seek  the  best  and,  if  possible,  to  ensue 
it.  His  Territorial  scheme  was  countered  from  first 
to  last  by  the  conscriptionists,  they  sought  by  every 
overt  and  covert  act  to  render  all  his  efforts  nuga- 
tory. I  venture  to  say,  not  without  sound  knowl- 
edge, that  he  occupied  a  position  of  hideous  respon- 
sibility with  a  measure  of  courage,  fortitude  and  al- 
truism to  which  those  who  are  best  qualified  to  judge 
will  always  pay  tribute.  One  thing  he  would  not  do. 
He  would  not  descend  into  the  arena  of  sordid  con- 
troversy to  gladden  the  hearts  and  stimulate  the 
conceit  of  petty  politicians.  If  he  failed,  he  was 
a  glorious  failure;  but  I  venture  to  say  that  when 
the  impartial  historian,  depending  on  knowledge  to 
which  the  general  public  cannot  yet  gain  access, 
surveys  the  years  that  led  to  destruction,  he  will 
rescue  Lord  Haldane's  name  and  fame  from  the 
accumulation  of  dirt  and  rubbish  that  have  been 
heaped  upon  it  by  men  whom  none  will  desire  to 
remember. 

I  regard  it  as  a  great  privilege  to  know  the  real 
man  and  to  lay  my  little  tribute  before  him,  though 
to  one  so  amply  dowered  with  the  hate  and  scorn  of 
scorn,  defenders  against  such  imputations  as  have 
been  levelled  at  him  may  well  be  superfluous.  But 
I  owe  a  great  debt  to  his  master  mind.    Of  all  the 


LORD  IIALDANE  249 

distinguished  men  I  have  been  privileged  to  meet 
none  has  had  higlier  qualities  of  heart  and  brain,  and 
it  seems  to  me  that  this  is  the  season  in  which  such 
a  debt  should  be  acknowledged. 


XXVI 

GROUNDS  FOR  OPTIMISM 

Those  of  us  who  find  in  the  stress  and  storm 
through  which  the  world  is  passing  an  irresistible 
appeal  for  strenuous  action  and  clear  thought,  must 
realise  the  dangerous  tendencies  of  the  time,  but 
it  is  not  right  to  look  upon  them  as  the  sum-total 
of  the  present  upheaval.  The  present  has  its  trage- 
dies that  pierce  to  the  heart  of  our  normal  self- 
restraint  ;  we  have  to  think  of  the  future  as  well  and 
see  whether  there  is  at  our  door  any  indication  of 
the  unity  and  brotherhood  for  which  millions  have 
waged  a  war  from  which  many  of  the  best  and  brav- 
est will  never  return.  Is  there  any  indication  that 
in  the  times  lying  before  us,  all  classes  of  the  com- 
munity will  unite  to  share  the  burdens  of  the  State? 
I  think  there  is. 

In  many  directions  the  lessons  of  life  and  death 
are  not  yet  learned,  but  there  is  one  feature  of  our 
social  life  that  is  truly  encouraging.  To  sum  it 
up  in  a  phrase  I  would  say  that  people  whose 
example  is  a  considerable  force  in  the  national  life, 
have  decided  that  it  is  neither  a  vice  nor  a  crime 

250 


GROUNDS  FOR  OPTIMISM  251 

to  be  poor.  A  modest  establishment  in  England 
to-day  is  more  fashionable  than  an  extravagant  one; 
those  of  us  who  are  burdened  by  very  large  places 
are  the  objects  of  sympathy  rather  than  envy. 

The  flunkey  has  been  redeemed  from  base  servi- 
tude, never  again  I  hope  and  l)elieve,  to  return.  The 
descendant  of  Jeames  de  la  Pluche,  immortalised 
by  Thackeray,  is  with  the  British  Expeditionary 
Force  or  qualifying  to  go  there.  He  has  discov- 
ered that  he  too  is  a  man.  The  butler,  where  he 
still  lingers,  is  too  old  for  service,  the  footmen,  if 
any,  have  been  rejected  by  the  army  doctor,  or  have 
played  a  part  and  returned  home  wounded  and  unfit 
as  yet  for  a  more  strenuous  life.  They  do  not  pro- 
pose to  remain  in  a  discredited  service.  Even  the 
maid-servants  are  reduced  to  the  minimum  that  is 
compatible  with  a  fair  day's  necessary  work.  The 
lady's-maid,  that  last  infirmity  of  conscientious 
minds,  is  allowed  ample  time  for  helping  the  nation. 
The  cook  gives  the  benefit  of  her  skill  not  only  to 
the  home  but  the  hospital.  The  sons  of  the  house 
are  at  the  front  if  they  are  old  enough  and  not  too 
old  to  be  of  use,  the  daughters  have  found  some- 
thing better  than  they  had  imagined  possible  to 
do  with  their  time.  They  have  flung  themselves  as 
far  in  the  pursuit  of  duty  as  they  travelled  formerly 
in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure. 

If  one  entertains  nowadays,  it  is  the  working 


252  A  WOJVIAN  AND  THE  WAR 

party  or  the  committee  of  which  one  is  a  member 
that  is  received.  Simplicity  is  the  order  of  the  hour 
among  friends  and  one  does  not  entertain  acquaint- 
ances. The  young  men  have  gone  from  stables  and 
garage,  from  woods  and  garden.  I  think  the  ex- 
pensive dressmakers,  jewellers,  restaurateurs,  hair- 
dressers, and  the  rest  of  those  who  catered  for  the 
days  of  our  vanity,  are  having  a  bad  time.  I  think 
they  will  see  a  worse  one.  There  are  still  thought- 
less women  in  our  midst.  I  recognise  them  at  once, 
for  they  clothe  themselves  in  the  furs  of  harmless 
animals  and  wear  hats  decked  with  the  bodies  or 
nuptial  plumage  of  innocent  birds,  as  if  pride  of 
power,  vanity,  and  lust  of  slaughter  had  not  brought 
enough  injury  to  the  world  and  vanity  must  still 
take  toll  of  life.  But  these  women  are  a  minority 
and  belong  to  the  class  that  nothing  short  of  ostra- 
cism can  reach.  I  think  it  will  reach  them,  and  soon. 
There  has  been  such  an  orgie  of  cruelty  in  the 
world  of  late  that  the  period  to  be  put  upon  it 
must  be  a  full  one. 

The  special  interest  in  the  changes  briefly  out- 
lined above,  and  the  list  might  be  continued  indefi- 
nitely, lies  in  the  approximation  at  home  to  the 
conditions  in  the  field  of  war.  There  the  struggle 
for  mastery  is  tending,  on  every  front,  to  the  ob- 
literation of  class  distinctions.  Many  of  these  that 
in  the  days  before  August,  1914,  were  rigid  as 


GROUNDS  FOR  OPTIMISM  253 

Hindu  caste  are  now  dead  as  well  as  damned.  Man- 
kind has  recognised  somethini^  of  its  essential  brotli- 
erhood  out  there,  and  now  womankind's  sisterhood 
is  recognised  too.  This  is  almost  the  more  impor- 
tant change,  because  so  many  men  who  remain  in 
England  waging  the  money  war  that  is  ever  with 
us  are  far  too  immersed  in  the  pursuit  of  pelf  to  care 
about  anything  else.  Against  them  even  our  de- 
fenders might  fail  in  times  of  peace  if  they  were 
left  unaided  by  the  other  sex.  Women  have  al- 
ways been  the  creators  and  supporters  of  extrava- 
gance, though  the  fault  rests  with  the  men  who  have 
until  quite  recent  times  refused  to  allow  them  any 
interests  that  will  vie  with  money-spending  and 
aimless  pleasure-seeking.  I  do  not  think  that  even 
this  war  could  have  brought  about  the  change  I  rec- 
ognise so  gladly  and  record  with  so  much  pleasure, 
had  it  not  been  for  the  feminist  movement.  This 
taught  tens  of  thousands  of  women  to  think  and 
thousands  to  make  their  thoughts  articulate.  War 
faced  them  with  a  sense  of  the  value  of  the  work 
they  had  undertaken,  the  urgent  need  of  its  pur- 
suit in  the  interests  of  the  world  at  large.  I  feel 
it  is  in  no  small  part  due  to  their  influence  that  so 
much  that  is  unworthy  in  the  life  of  the  modern 
woman  has  been  voluntarily  laid  aside  and  that  so 
much  of  infinite  value  has  been  chosen  to  replace  it. 
Just  as  men  have  mingled  on  the  battlefield. 


254<  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

women  have  mingled  at  home,  understanding  per- 
haps for  the  first  time  in  our  social  history  the  view- 
point of  classes  other  than  their  own,  seeing  the 
best  in  each  other's  lives  and  sharing  anxieties  and 
burdens  as  perhaps  only  women  can.  But  if  the 
good  understanding  was  to  be  permanent  it  was 
essential  that  privilege  should  be  laid  aside.  Peo- 
ple can  enjoy  riches  without  a  thought  and  suffer 
poverty  without  a  murmur,  but  contrasts  build 
barriers.  It  is  the  sense  of  sharp  contrast  that  is 
the  undoing  of  so  many  girls,  that  makes  for  so 
much  bitterness  among  women.  All  too  often  the 
rich  do  not  understand,  the  poor  are  painfully  sus- 
picious or  self-conscious.  There  could  not  be  any 
common  meeting  ground  until  all  were  rich  or  all 
were  poor.  It  is  not  possible  under  existing  social 
conditions — soon  one  hopes  to  be  amended — for  all 
to  live  in  comfort.  Thank  God,  it  is  at  least  pos- 
sible for  all  to  be  poor. 

Not  by  what  we  have,  but  by  what  we  are,  let 
us  be  judged,  and  for  those  who  had  great  posses- 
sions there  will  be  a  certain  satisfaction  in  the  new 
conditions  that  money  could  not  purchase. 

Flattery,  adulation,  jealousy,  envy,  malice  and 
all  uncharitableness  could  be  provoked  by  wealth 
even  though  it  was  wisely  dispensed ;  gratitude  was 
always  hard  to  gain  in  the  genuine  form.  Love, 
affection,  simple  unaffected  candour,  these  were 


GROUNDS  FOR  OPTIMISM  255 

rarely  vouchsafed  to  those  whose  material  prosper- 
ity was  considerable.  It  is  intolerable  that  one 
should  patronise  or  endure  patronage,  frank  and 
simple  relations  cannot  endure  in  an  atmosphere  of 
inequalities.  In  England  the  infection  of  snobbery 
was  eating  into  our  national  life.  A  considerable 
section  of  the  press  caters  for  snobs  and  thrives  in 
the  catering.  In  the  United  States  and  in  the 
British  Dominions  Overseas  the  state  of  the  public 
mind  is  far  healthier.  It  may  be  that  our  plight 
had  come  about  through  our  insularity,  by  reason 
of  our  super-abundant  national  riches,  by  the  force 
of  our  habit  of  despising  the  creator  of  national 
wealth  and  honouring  only  those  who  squander  it. 
Whatever  the  cause  the  effect  was  ugly.  War  has 
taken  drastic  steps  to  abate  the  evil  by  depriving  of 
their  locus  standi  those  who  stood  for  great  posses- 
sions. They  are  poorer  and  better.  We  shall  have 
a  certain  number  of  plutocrats  in  our  midst ;  out  of 
a  war  expenditure  of  four  or  five  millions  a  day 
somebody  must  make  money.  But  the  money 
spinners  will  find  that  while  the  hand  of  the  State 
will  weigh  heavily  upon  them,  any  lavish  expendi- 
ture will  be  eyed  askance  by  the  moderate-minded 
men  and  women  of  all  classes.  The  eyes  of  the 
majority  are  opened.  Above  all,  English  women 
of  the  leisured  classes  have  deliberately  laid  aside 
many  of  the  habits  and  indulgences  to  which  their 


256  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

practice  gave  a  sanction.  This  tendency  is  still  in 
its  infancy,  but  the  tragedy  of  war  has  enforced  and 
will  continue  to  enforce  it.  All,  or  at  least  the 
greater  part  of  Europe,  after  this  war  will  be  a 
house  of  mourning.  Death  leads  the  van  of  a  pro- 
cession in  which  Poverty  brings  up  the  rear.  As  in 
a  flash  the  world  that  lived  almost  without  a  serious 
care  two  years  ago  sees  its  own  real  needs  and  duties 
and  the  terrible  inadequacy  of  the  means  to  fulfil 
and  perform  them. 

We  find  to-day  that  our  national  needs  are 
greater  than  we  knew,  our  resources  less  than  they 
have  been  for  many  years.  The  only  true  satis- 
faction to  be  gathered  from  the  prospect  is  that  we 
recognise  it.  For  once  in  our  history  it  is  not  left 
to  a  few  courageous  men  to  preach  an  unpopular 
gospel  in  the  ears  of  indifferent  wealth  and  vanity- 
stricken  fashion.  The  people  who  are  alive  to  the 
truth  of  our  national  state  are  not  devoting  anxious 
hours  to  keeping  up  appearances.  Shams  that 
our  life  seemed  full  of  so  recently,  are  known  for 
what  they  are.  For  the  first  time  in  the  social  his- 
tory of  our  generation  it  suffices  to  be  an  English- 
man or  an  Englishwoman  and  to  have  filled  the 
role,  however  modest,  that  the  fates  have  assigned 
in  this  world  crisis.  Shall  we  miss  the  old  luxuries 
of  life?  Will  those  of  us  who  accepted  them  with- 
out thought  or  comment  as  part  of  the  natural 


GROUNDS  FOR  OPTLMISM  257 

order  of  things,  forego  them  without  a  qualm?  I 
think  we  shall,  because  we  shnll  all  l.ave  a  serious 
and  definite  occupation.  The  landowner  n.ust  de- 
velop a  good  business  faculty  or  go  under,  the  mis- 
tress of  a  large  establishment  must  learn  all  the 
domestic  arts  that  her  grandmothers  practised  to 
perfection  or  she  will  not  be  able  to  keep  it  to- 
gether. The  younger  sons  will  not  be  brought  up 
to  look  upon  loafing  as  a  career,  and  the  girls  will 
be  trP'T^d  to  take  a  part  in  the  world's  work,  fcrli- 
fied  by  the  knowledge  that  the  State  no  longer  re- 
gards them  as  a  negligible  quantity.  In  the  near 
future  the  British  Empire  will  be  demanding  more 
of  its  sons  and  daughters  and  giving  them  less  re- 
ward for  it,  but  such  a  condition  encourages  the 
national  virtues.  We  are  rather  a  flint-like  people. 
If  we  are  properly  struck  we  emit  light. 

Decidedly  the  world  is  out  of  joint,  and  it  is 
possible  to  survey  the  situation  and  find  ample 
material  for  pessimism.  But  we  who  have  made 
the  mistakes  or  inherited  them  can  set  the  crooked 
straight  if  we  recognise  the  nature  of  the  task. 
And  I  see  on  all  sides  of  me  men  and  women  who 
do.  They  are  preparing  the  ground  on  which  the 
virtues  engendered  by  a  struggle  for  national  ex- 
istence may  blossom  and  bear  fruit. 


XXVII 

ANGLO-AMERICAN  RELATIONS  IN  PEACE  AND  WAR 

The  Anglo-Saxon  race  is  on  its  trial  just  now,  and, 
however  strenuous  the  times,  they  do  not  deny  us 
a  measure  of  leisure  in  which  to  estimate  the  forces 
upon  which  we  may  rely.  With  battleships  and 
regiments  woman  has  nothing  to  do,  she  does  but 
bring  painfully  into  the  world  those  who  serve 
both.  It  is  her  mission  to  shield  them  with  her 
love  and  devotion  in  the  season  of  their  helpless- 
ness and  wait,  watch,  and  pray  while  the  battles 
join.  Hers  too  it  is  to  do  what  may  be  done  to 
heal  the  wounds  of  battle,  to  comfort  and  to  min- 
ister, to  know  the  anxiety  without  the  excitement  of 
conflict,  to  see  much  of  the  horror  and  little  of 
the  glory.  Yet,  far  outside  the  area  of  strife, 
woman  plays  no  negligible  part  in  controlling  the 
destinies  of  nations,  for  there  is  a  field  of  social 
diplomacy  in  which  she  labours  persistently  and  the 
measure  of  Anglo-Saxon  unity  that  obtains  to-day 
is  in  no  small  measure  the  fruit  of  her  effort. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  before  there  was  an 
Anglo-American  social  life,  relations  between  the 

258 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  RELATIONS  259 

mother  country  and  the  United  States  were  the 
reverse  of  cordiaL  JMany  people  in  the  States  re- 
garded this  country  with  suspicion,  many  in  this 
country  looked  upon  the  States  with  the  contempt 
bom  of  ignorance.  Emerson,  James  Russell  Low- 
ell, Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  and  others  helped 
Englishmen  to  understand  Americans,  but  per- 
haps the  best  work  was  done  by  women.  As  soon  as 
they  began  to  understand  one  another  the  diver- 
gent standpoints  were  brought  into  line,  old  preju- 
dices were  seen  to  lie  no  deeper  than  the  surface 
of  tilings.  The  freshness  and  vigour  of  American 
manhood,  the  honest,  unconventional  outlook  of  the 
country's  womanliood  were  instantly  recognised 
when  social  intercourse  had  been  established  and 
visitors  from  the  States  began  to  realise  that  in 
coming  to  England  they  were  but  returning  to  the 
land  of  their  fathers.  JNIistakes  are  not  immortal. 
The  worst  blunderer  of  a  hundred  years  ago  and 
the  people  who  suffered  most  by  the  blunders  have 
long  been  one  in  the  dust  to  which  all  that  is  mortal 
of  us  must  return.  Latent  and  underlying  sympa- 
thies have  declared  themselves.  For  thirty  years  I 
have  watched  the  slow  conquest  of  prejudice,  the 
steady  discovery  of  points  of  sympathy,  the  dis- 
missal of  the  old  stereotyped  ideas  that  made  for 
antagonism.  To-day,  when  we  are  fighting  for  our 
life  against  a  Power  that  has  sworn  to  dominate 


260  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

civilisation  or  perish  in  the  attempt,  we  find  our- 
selves rich  in  the  sympathy  and  moral  support  of 
all  the  North  American  continent,  not  only  the 
British  born  of  Canada  are  with  us,  but  in  the 
United  States,  despite  the  multitude  of  foreign  in- 
fluences and  the  great  admixture  of  interests  the 
general  tone  is  manifestly  sympathetic.  The  Ger- 
man menace  has  stirred  Anglo-Saxon  blood 
throughout  the  whole  world.  The  observance  of  a 
strict  and  proper  neutrality  is  no  bar  to  American 
goodwill,  our  cousins  know  that  this  struggle  has 
been  forced  upon  us  and  that  we  would  have  avoided 
it  had  not  honour  forbade. 

In  the  brief  intervals  of  the  work  of  organising 
the  woman's  service  in  my  native  county  of  Essex 
I  have  been  trying  to  estimate  the  forces  that  have 
brought  the  changed  conditions  about,  and  I  think 
I  can  see  most  of  them.  I  have  met  most  if  not  all 
the  leading  men  and  women  of  America,  both  in 
their  own  country  and  here,  and  no  subject  has 
been  more  completely  canvassed  in  our  conversa- 
tions than  the  future  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  race 
may  hope  to  share.  My  views,  right  or  wrong, 
are  my  own,  and  I  ask  nobody  to  accept  any  re- 
sponsibility for  them ;  if  they  are  correct  they  should 
help  to  explain  the  present  and  to  indicate  lines  that 
the  future  may  follow. 

First  and  foremost  among  the  forces  that  have 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  RELATIONS  261 

improved  Anglo-American  relations  I  place  the 
Anglo-American  marriages  that  sliould  go  far  to 
improve  not  only  the  finances  but  the  breed  of  our 
English  aristocracy.  Byron  writes  of  mixed  mar- 
riages that  they  "ruin  the  blood  but  much  improve 
the  breed."  I  accept  only  the  latter  proposition. 
I  think  the  young  generation  born  of  these  mar- 
riages will  be  powerful,  mentally  and  physically, 
that  it  may  even  be  in  time  to  stand  in  the  breach 
and  save  the  class  to  which  it  will  belong  from  sub- 
mersion. Certainly  our  aristocracy,  enfeebled  by 
intermarriage  and  circumscribed  financially  by  mod- 
ern taxation  and  the  depreciation  in  agricultural 
values,  degraded  by  the  sale  of  "honours,"  would 
be  bound  to  go  under  in  the  struggle  with  democ- 
racy, and  if  it  is  possible  to  predicate  any  of  the 
results  of  the  present  cataclysm  I  should  say  that 
the  democracy  will  issue  from  it  as  the  dominating 
force  in  Europe.  Another  section  of  a  royalty  that 
tends  ever  to  diminish  has  been  weighed  in  the  bal- 
ances of  war  and  will,  I  imagine,  be  found  want- 
ing. 

Anglo-American  marriages  have  given  our  cou- 
sins of  the  New  World  an  interest  in  the  old  firm's 
business,  have  made  them,  even  if  in  a  limited  sense, 
partners  in  the  British  Empire  unlimited.  I  said 
as  much  at  the  dinner-table  the  other  night  and  was 
promptly  challenged  until   1   reminded  my  critic 


262  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

that  an  ex-First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  to  whose 
genius  all,  including  Lord  Charles  Beresford,  now 
pay  tribute,  is  as  much  American  as  English.  INIiss 
Jerome,  Lady  Randolph  Churchill,  was  one  of  the 
first  recruits  to  the  ranks  of  the  British  aristocracy 
and  has  played  no  small  part  in  English  social  life. 
Winston  Churchill  has  had  time  to  grow  up,  there 
are  dozens  of  Anglo- American  lads  to  whom  in  the 
course  of  time  opportunity  will  be  given.  Who 
shall  say  that  they  too  will  not  prove  worthy? 

The  American  girl,  married  into  the  wide  circle 
of  Britain's  comfortable  classes,  finds  many  inter- 
ests that  unite  the  country  of  her  adoption  with  the 
land  of  her  birth.  Visited  by  her  family  and  friends, 
giving  introductions  for  use  in  the  United  States 
to  her  husband's  relatives,  she  has  been  powerful 
in  spreading  social  intercourse  and  in  establishing 
the  vital  truth  that,  in  face  of  many  of  the  great 
world  problems,  England  and  America  see  eye  to 
eye  and  may  work  hand  in  hand.  Philanthropy  and 
social  service  are  the  finest  solvents  of  prejudice 
between  people  speaking  one  language  and,  when 
that  prejudice  is  not  founded  on  fundamental  dis- 
agreement, and  is  dependent  for  its  maintenance 
upon  ignorance,  suspicion  and  the  absence  of  inter- 
course, it  cannot  long  survive  under  modern  condi- 
tions. Every  Atlantic  Liner  is  a  missionary  of 
Anglo-American   good-will.      London    and   New 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  RELATIONS  263 

York  can  exchange  their  thoughts  in  a  few  mo- 
ments, the  great  sundering  force  of  the  Atlantic 
grows  ever  less,  and  the  American  girl  has  played  a 
part  in  unifying  Anglo-Saxon  thought  and  sym- 
pathy that  makes  her  social  reward  seem  but  a  small 
payment  for  a  great  service. 

Perhaps  the  great  antagonising  force  in  America 
has  been  the  Irishman.  Our  administration  of  the 
Sister  Island  has  left  scars  that  had  been  past  heal- 
ing but  for  iMr.  Gladstone  and  his  successors  in  the 
office  of  Liberalism.  Happily  to-day  we  stand 
upon  the  brink  of  wiser  times,  a  sane  policy  has 
promised  to  realise  the  national  ambitions  of  Ire- 
land and  a  grave  danger  has  united  in  resistance  to 
foreign  aggression  the  two  antagonistic  camps. 
They  will  meet  in  the  service  of  a  common  cause, 
the}'  will  face  danger  side  by  side,  happily  they 
may  learn  the  full  lesson  of  toleration  and  mutual 
respect.  It  is  better  I  think,  much  as  I  hate  war, 
that  a  thousand  Home  Rulers  and  Ulstermen 
should  fall  side  by  side  resisting  foreign  aggression 
than  that  fifty  should  fall  in  civil  strife  each  by 
the  other's  hands.  The  effect  in  America  of  Home 
Rule,  and  a  union  of  hearts  and  hands  in  the 
national  defence,  cannot  but  be  significant.  The 
powerful  Irish  contingent,  as  generous  as  it  is 
quick  to  anger,  almost  as  prompt  to  forgive  an 
injury  for  which  atonement  has  been  made  as  to 


264.  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

resent  one  that  is  not  repaired,  will  cease  to  be  a 
hostile  factor.  Conscious  that  the  old  country  has 
done  its  best  to  right  a  grave  and  lasting  wrong,  it 
will  forget,  as  the  American  born  citizen  is  for- 
getting, the  days  of  Lords  North  and  Castlereagh. 
All  these  quarrels,  however  serious,  have  been 
family  quarrels,  in  the  face  of  foreign  aggression 
the  old  wounds  are  healed.  I  was  struck  by  the 
splendid  action  of  all  parties  to  the  labour  disputes 
when  war  broke  out.  In  twenty-four  hours  there 
were  no  disputants. 

To-day  the  Anglo-American  influences  at  which 
I  have  hinted  find  no  opposing  factors  in  their 
path.  Good  will  is  well-nigh  universal,  moral 
support  and  encouragement  are  freely  ours  at 
this  grave  moment  when  we  stand  so  much  in 
need  of  them.  I  have  always  thought,  when  I 
have  been  in  America  and  when  I  have  been  enter- 
tained by  or  have  entertained  Americans  at  home, 
that  there  is  a  little  feeling  of  pride  in  the  old 
country.  If  our  short-sighted  policy  of  the  third 
Georgian  era  turned  friends  to  foes  we  have  paid 
the  price  in  full  and  to-day  the  Anglo-American 
marriages  are  giving  our  trans- Atlantic  cousins 
the  material  for  a  noble  revenge.  They  are 
coming  to  the  relief  of  the  class  that  persecuted 
them  of  old  time,  renewing  its  blood,  refilling  its 
coffers  and  preparing  through  it  to  administer  the 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  RELATIONS  265 

world's  greatest  Empire.  It  is  no  unworthy 
ambition  that  animates  the  American  girl  to-day 
when  she  quits  the  land  of  her  fathers  for  the 
land  of  her  grandparents  and  tlieir  forebears,  and 
she  has  shown  herself  well  able  to  fulfil  it. 
The  pages  of  Debrett  bear  witness  to  what  she 
has  done,  while  those  who  have  been  brought 
into  constant  and  intimate  association  with  her 
realise  that  she  has  shown  exceptional  capacity 
in  adapting  herself  to  the  new  environment,  in 
mastering  the  rather  formidable  etiquette,  in 
modifying  old  points  of  view,  and  in  fitting  herself 
to  fill  the  rather  exacting  role  she  has  undertaken. 

When  I  look  round  social  London  and  see  the 
many-sided  work  of  the  American  women  I  feel 
that  they  will  cover  the  whole  ground.  Their 
energy  and  resource  are  admirable  and  many  of 
their  houses  are  centres  of  philanthropic  as  well 
as  social  life.  Think  of  the  reflex  action  of  all 
this  energy  in  the  States,  think  of  the  tens  of  thou- 
sands of  American  visitors  to  London  in  the  course 
of  the  year  and  of  the  hundreds  who  see  English 
social  life  as  it  is  and  partake  of  it,  and  the  sym- 
pathy and  understanding  that  are  ours  to-day  can 
be  accounted  for  and  understood. 

I  have  long  been  cognisant  of  the  two  great 
forces  that  were  working,  side  by  side  though  in- 
dependently, to  destroy  Anglo-American  friend- 


^66  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

ship.  The  first  was  Irish- American  resentment,  a 
perfectly  natural  expression  of  feeling.  Home 
Rule  for  Ireland  was  the  only  possible  permanent 
cure,  and  the  time  for  palliatives  has  long  passed. 
With  the  coming  of  the  cure  we  may  look  for  the 
end  of  the  complaint.  The  other  force  was  more 
subtle,  and  was  founded  upon  the  presence  in  the 
States  of  tens  of  thousands  of  the  Kaiser's  subjects. 
They  have  carried  across  the  Atlantic  their  old 
mischievous  motto,  "Deutschland  iiber  Alles,"  and 
have  lost  no  opportunity  of  giving  it  eifect.  A 
powerful  press,  a  great  financial  group,  direct 
encouragement  from  the  Kaiser,  whose  policy — a 
relic  of  Bismarck's  day — was  to  sow  ill-will  between 
Great  Britain  and  the  United  States  under  all 
circumstances,  have  been  their  weapons.  To 
conciliate  the  States,  to  flatter  them,  to  suggest 
that  they  needed  German  help  against  British 
intrigue,  to  show  their  leading  representatives 
every  courtesy,  even  to  affect  a  sympathy  with 
democracy,  all  this  was  the  part  of  a  settled  pro- 
gramme.   It  lacked  nothing  but  success. 

This  is  not  the  time  to  go  into  details  of  de- 
liberate attempts  made  to  undermine  Anglo- 
American  good  will.  On  a  more  fitting  occasion  I 
may  reveal  some.  At  the  moment  it  does  not 
seem  right  to  increase  the  prevailing  bitterness, 
but  I  may  say  that  many  social  intrigues  have 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  RELATIONS  267 

come  to  my  own  notice  and  have  left  me  wondering 
at  Teuton  pertinacity,  at  the  persistence  with  which 
large  and  small  matters  alike  are  pursued,  and  at 
the  curious  psychological  failing  that  nearly  always 
loses  count  of  the  human  element.  Theoretically, 
logically  perhaps,  the  German  advances  should 
have  been  entirely  successful.  Unhappily  for  the 
Kaiser's  ambitions,  it  was  always  fairly  obvious 
that  behind  every  courtesy,  however  extravagant, 
behind  every  diplomatic  action,  however  grave 
or  trivial,  there  lay  an  Anglophobe  bias.  It  was 
not  perhaps  always  conscious  to  its  originators; 
the  state  of  mind  towards  Great  Britain  in 
Germany  is  largely  inherited,  and  I  sometimes 
think  it  is  well-nigh  sub-conscious.  Indeed,  I 
would  venture  the  proposition  that  it  is  more  ob- 
vious to  an  American  than  it  is  to  the  German 
possessors  of  it.  The  United  States  is  of  course 
the  world's  melting  pot;  happily  for  us,  and  I 
think  for  the  world  at  large,  the  Anglo-Saxon 
element  is  dominant.  In  such  an  environment 
Anglophobia  cannot  thrive,  and  I  think  the 
Kaiser's  representatives  have  mistaken  the  actual- 
ities of  the  situation.  Anglo-American  squabbles 
are  the  little  family  quarrels  with  which  we  are  all 
familiar;  if  one  were  to  come  from  the  outside 
and  seek  to  take  part  in  them,  he  would  soon  learn 
that  such  an  intrusion  was  unwarranted  and  un- 


268  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

welcome.  Instead  of  extending  the  area  of  the 
original  quarrel  it  would  reduce  it  to  vanishing 
point.  In  Anglo-American  relations  the  Kaiser 
must  remain  an  "outsider,"  accepted  while  he  be- 
haves himself,  but  known  all  the  time  for  the  rep- 
resentative of  a  proud,  powerful  nation  that  is 
avid  of  world  power  and  will  shrink  from  no  effort 
to  obtain  it,  a  nation  that,  if  it  is  to  be  judged  by- 
its  rulers,  holds  that  the  result  justifies  the  cause, 
and  that  kindness,  deceit,  generosity,  cajolery, 
persuasion,  threats,  candour,  and  deceit  are  all 
weapons  that  find  a  proper  place  in  the  armoury 
of  a  subtle  diplomacy  and  may  be  called  upon 
in  turn.  There  is  a  world  in  which  this  standard 
of  things  passes  current,  the  world  of  the  com- 
pany promoter,  the  international  financier,  the 
Jesuit  who  holds  that  the  end  justifies  if  it  can- 
not sanctify.  On  the  other  hand,  all  these  mental 
processes  are  abhorrent  to  the  Anglo-Saxon.  He 
is  by  nature  plain  and  blunt,  subtleties  are  for- 
eign to  him.  It  is  his  ambition  to  play  the  game, 
and  he  requires  the  game  to  be  clean  that  it  may 
be  worth  the  playing.  He  likes  to  place  his  cards 
on  the  table,  you  will  not  find  them  in  his  sleeve  or 
his  boot.  We  know  that  the  sowing  of  mistrust 
between  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  has 
been  one  of  the  chief  pre-occupations  of  German 
diplomacy,  we  know  too  that  it  has  failed  as  signally 


\ 


ANGLO-AMERICAN  RELATIONS  269 

as  the  early  and  vital  attacks  upon  the  Liege  forts 
failed.  To  accomplish  its  destiny  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  must  stand  together.  We  need  not  interfere 
in  each  other's  quarrels,  we  need  not  model  our  lives 
to  a  pattern  that  is  not  sanctified  by  use  and  cus- 
tom, but  we  will  not  allow  any  other  nation  to 
come  between  us  and  our  friendship,  or  to  inter- 
fere with  that  slow,  sure  growth  of  understand- 
ing and  good  feeling  that  may  bring  to  generations 
unborn  the  blessing  of  universal  good-fellowship 
and  peace. 

In  all  human  probability  the  Teuton  has  post- 
poned his  own  day  for  generations.  The  triumphs 
of  more  than  forty  years  of  peaceful  progress  have 
been  bartered  and  have  been  used  as  gambling 
counters,  and  I  believe  that  a  double  menace  is 
now  in  slow  course  of  removal,  first  from  this  little 
island  whose  sons  and  great  grandsons  in  their 
millions  are  looking,  anxious  to  see  how  we  acquit 
ourselves,  and  from  those  South  American  Re- 
publics that  purpose  by  grace  of  Providence  to 
work  out  their  own  salvation  without  either  the 
help  or  the  permission  of  the  Kaiser  and  his  legions. 
When  we  have  succeeded  in  our  present  struggle — 
I  do  not  admit  the  possibility  of  a  doubt  about  the 
issue — the  way  will  be  open  for  the  triumphs  of 
peace  and  for  the  passing  of  armaments  and 
tyrannies.     Surely  in  these  great  changes  so  long 


270  A  WOMAN  AND  THE  WAR 

looked  for,  so  eagerly  anticipated  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic,  the  whole  voice  of  the  United  Anglo- 
Saxon  Race  will  speak  in  unison.  I  believe  we 
shall  play  no  small  part  in  the  re-shaping  and  re- 
building of  a  shattered  and  exhausted  world,  and 
that  the  genuine  friendliness  of  our  relations  will 
make  the  task  as  pleasant  as  it  is  responsible. 
Side  by  side  we  have  sought  peace  and  ensued  it, 
the  overwhelming  tragedy  may  have  shown  that 
"man  is  one  and  the  Fates  are  three,"  but  it  will 
not  alter  our  national  and  racial  belief  that  we 
must  develop  the  tranquillity  of  the  world,  that 
we  must  develop  the  arts  of  peace  and  arm  for 
defence  rather  than  defiance.  Through  the  gloom 
and  murk  of  the  present  hour  I  find  myself  looking 
with  assured  confidence  to  the  world's  future,  and 
whatever  the  Vision  I  see  the  whole  Anglo-Saxon 
race  massing  irresistible  forces  for  the  service  of 
the  world. 


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